New Perspective 1 THE CHOSEN
by Bellegeste
Summary: aka NEVILLE AND THE BOROMETZ. Wracked with doubts after the death of Dumbledore, Hermione and Neville, assisted by the legendary Borometz, embark on a dangerous quest to find Snape and learn the truth. Nominated for two Multifaceted Awards.
1. The Price of Freedom

New Perspective 1

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit making tribute to the work of JKR; the characters are the property of JKR and her publishers.**

**Spoilers: post-HBP; pro-Snape.**

**Author's Note: The stories in the 'New Perspective' series will be HBP compliant and non-Severitus.**

**Thank you to Duj for her unofficial but rigorous beta-ing of this story.**

**THE CHOSEN is set in the summer, just a couple of weeks after the end of HBP. **

**Chapter 1 : THE PRICE OF FREEDOM**

Friday 1st August, 7.30a.m. _'Pinch and a punch for the first of the month and no returns back'_… Hermione would have pinched herself if she had realised what was in store. She didn't know it yet, but today was going to be the start of a lot more than just the month of August…

The scrape and swish of curtains being pulled back; the lazy groan of the quarter-light window being pushed open to the full extent of its alloy hinges; the intrusion of grey light filtering through the bedclothes. Hermione shut her eyes more tightly. By her side she sensed something soft, furry and radiator warm shift and stretch; the hot pads of four paws pressed against her stomach, pin-sharp claws flexing against bare skin.

"Wake up sleepy-head. There's a cup of tea there. Don't let it go cold. I'm off now – thought I should allow extra time this morning – the queues yesterday were quite ridiculous – didn't get to work till gone nine. The traffic from Bank Road's all being diverted down Pepper Street – it's because of that burst water-main… Mrs Questing says those four cottages down by Underbridge were completely flooded. Anyway, mustn't be late. Can you remember to hang out the washing, and then the gas man's due sometime between eight and noon to check the pilot light on the boiler – course, they can never give you a proper time… so annoying, dear, I know, but then you weren't planning on going anywhere today, were you? And if you do go out, you will be careful…? It's not a very nice day anyway – you wouldn't think we were in August already… I've taken some salmon out of the freezer for tonight, but if you've got a minute, if you could pick some beans… Hermione?"

Mrs Granger's voice droned through the duvet with her catalogue of news and arrangements and chores. In spite of her supposed haste to make the eleven mile journey to her surgery, Hermione's mother showed no sign of leaving.

"Hermione?"

"Yes, I heard… gas man, beans…" The sleep-tousled brown tangle rolled over just enough to mumble a muffled response.

"Hm. Well, don't forget. And drink your tea while it's hot and… oh, dear, I really don't think you should allow that cat…" She had caught sight of two ginger ears peeping out from beneath the covers. However much she disapproved, Mrs Granger knew better than to try to dislodge a comfortably ensconced Crookshanks: patients didn't like their dentist's fingers to be covered in sticking plasters. "He may be magical, but he's not hygienic." She moved towards the door, pausing momentarily before the dressing-table to pout her lipstick at the mirror.

"One more thing, Princess, the Today Programme was advising everybody to boil their drinking water - I know we're not Cumbria, but there's no need to take chances. Might as well be on the safe side. So stick to tea, there's a good girl. Or there's some mineral water in the larder – haven't had time to put it in the fridge…"

Hermione scowled. The last thing she wanted to be called at the moment was 'princess'. She'd had enough of spurious royalty recently. And apart from that, she'd be eighteen soon, for goodness sake! Was she never to be allowed to shake off that hideous childhood nickname? Hot water? What was that about? Fridges, kettles, boilers – the tools of the Muggle world were reassuringly safe and familiar: clumsy, functional gadgets, but predictable, understandable collections of banal components, not remotely exciting or mysterious (unless you happened to be Arthur Weasley, of course). She shuddered to think that any one of these innocuous objects could just as easily be something as dangerously powerful as a Portkey or a Horcrux.

"Right. I'll be home by six, dear. Have a good day. Oh, by the way, there's a letter for you."

"A letter?" Hermione sat up in bed. A disgruntled, overheated Crookshanks scrambled out, shook a pale flurry of moulted fur into the air and jumped down with a less than dainty thud. "Who's it from? From Ron? Mum, was it Ron's hand-writing? Or from Harry? How did it come?"

"In the post, dear. I told you." Mrs Granger, conscious that she was now going to hit the rush hour traffic, answered impatiently. For an intelligent, professional woman she could be surprisingly obtuse. Hermione suspected that it was quite deliberate, a demarcation line between everyday Muggle life and the magical world her daughter now inhabited. Her attitude towards wizardry was tolerant – a rationalised acceptance, with Hermione's happiness weighing in as a significant factor – as long as it didn't encroach too far into her own conventional territory.

"But was it an owl?" Hermione insisted.

"No, dear, a _letter_."

xxx

It was nearly a week since Ron's last letter. A week! And that hadn't said much except that he and Harry had gone through Grimmauld Place with a fine-tooth comb using every dark detector available and had found absolutely nothing. There hadn't been a single word of apology, not even an acknowledgement that he was in the wrong. Which he was. It was almost as though Ron hadn't realised what he'd done. Well, she wasn't going to be the one to make the first move. It was up to him. If he couldn't see that… Did he honestly think_ he_ had the right to tell _her_ what to do? To make her decisions for her? Did he think he owned her? It had been rather sweet at first, the protectiveness, being treated as though she were something special and delicate, and the cuddles were nice, she couldn't deny that, but the novelty had soon worn off. 'Nice' wasn't enough. Could they build a relationship on _nice_? Over the last few weeks the cosseting had begun to oppress her, stifle her. This overbearing concern for her wellbeing was like a straight-jacket. Ron had never bothered when they were just friends, but now… she felt as though she had become a piece of property that he was safeguarding, a valuable yet mindless chattel. When he had forbidden her - _forbidden_ her! – to accompany them to Grimmauld Place on the grounds that if they found the locket it might be dangerous, that had been the last straw. She wished Ginny had never noticed Harry's fake Horcrux and remembered seeing something like it before...

And Harry? Since that night, that dreadful night, Harry had been on some jack of his own. He'd answered their questions, sure enough; he'd repeated his story for the Aurors, cooperated with the Ministry (though his idea of cooperation still fell far short of Scrimgeour's promotional ideal), but she could tell his heart wasn't in it. On the surface it was all fire, all action – track down the killer, hunt for the Horcruxes, destroy the Death Eaters… but the inner Harry had withdrawn, had closed his mind and shut them out. He didn't want their sympathy. He claimed to have given up on Occlumency, but the defensive barriers were still there, stronger than ever, shored-up by his conviction that the responsibility for killing Voldemort now rested with him alone. He had barricaded himself in an arena with his anger and guilt and grief and was battling it out by himself; his friends could spectate, helplessly, but they couldn't reach him. There was no reasoning with Harry just now - he was flying solo.

So who could be writing to her? If it were another facile self-defence leaflet from the Ministry, or one of Fred and George's jokey advertising flyers for 'Wizard Wheezes' why hadn't they sent an owl? She already had the provisional reading list for next term – if there was going to be a next term. Hogwarts without Dumbledore was unimaginable. And without Harry too? Did she even want to go back herself? Could she contemplate a future without a portfolio of Outstanding NEWTs? What was life without qualifications?

The letter could wait. Outside the sky was heavy and overcast, the uniform grey-white of over-washed nylon. Hermione stood at the window, feeling suitably tragic, a Hardy-esque heroine, the unlucky victim of circumstances, malign fate and bad weather. It was good to be home, she wouldn't deny that, but was she any safer here than out searching for clues with Ron and Harry? She felt trapped and useless, unappreciated and distinctly hard-done-by. Hogwarts was closed until September; she couldn't even use the school library to research any leads. It was all so frustrating. She was beginning to identify with how Sirius must have felt, stuck in Grimmauld Place.

Hermione showered and then, too lethargic to dress yet, sat wrapped in her bathrobe, staring at her reflection, wishing that the serious, humourless face which so dully returned her gaze was that of anybody but the careworn, lovelorn, Muggle-born Hermione Jane Granger. Everything was such a mess. Ever since Dumbledore's death everything had been falling apart. The school, the Order - no one seemed to know what was going on or what to do next. Hermione's faith was badly shaken: she needed to thrash out what had happened, to put to rest the whispering doubts that lurked in the wings, prompting her unspoken thoughts. Who could she talk to? At moments like this, shouldn't she be confiding in her boyfriend? But Ron was almost the last person she could discuss this with; almost, but not quite - the last person was Harry.

Acting on impulse, she scraped her hair back severely from her temples, tugging it tight, imprisoning it in a McGonagall style bun, hoping by imitation to assume the dignity and composure of her new Headmistress… Within seconds the outlaw curls had made a break for liberty, bursting free of the elastic band, wayward and unrepentant as ever. Sometimes she just hated her hair; she wished she could cut it all off, become a different person, a softer, more manageable, less awkward person. Chic, competent, stylish, self-disciplined – that was the image she would have liked to project, but what chance did she have with this untamed, feral frizz? Dejectedly she teased out a few knotted, brown strands and began twisting them into thin plaits…

In the kitchen there was no sign of her copy of the _Daily Prophet_. Bother! That made the fourth day in a row it had failed to arrive. She would have to owl the subscriptions department and complain. Which would mean going to the post office in Diagon Alley that afternoon, once the gas man had been. Should she risk it? They had all been warned not to make unnecessary journeys and to travel in twos or groups wherever possible.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," McGonagall had told them. Hermione had wondered at the time whether the old witch realised she was quoting Jefferson, or whether it was just a coincidence - tragic circumstances leading us all to the same basic truisms. McGonagall had also told them not to worry, to go home and have a good summer – her eyes glittering bleakly behind the square spectacles; her dry, Scottish tones now parched with the effort of self-control and conveying about as much holiday cheer as the wail of a bagpipe. The Headmistress had then gone on to recount the fable of the sticks: individually fragile, but together, as a bundle, unbreakable - just as the Sorting Hat had warned them the previous year. Had they listened then? Was anyone listening now? Not Harry, that's for sure.

Idly turning the pages of the local paper, uninspired by the attempts of some ardent cub reporter to describe the festivities at last week's village fete, Hermione dismissed the Muggle news as irrelevant and uninteresting. How could they be fussing about the funding for a new district Scout HQ, when all around them the wizard world was facing its worst crisis for umpteen years? Then the word 'Cumbria' caught her attention and, brushing away toast crumbs, she looked more closely. An outbreak of some virulent, as yet unidentified, gastric bug which had so far claimed no lives but had filled all available hospital beds, had been traced to a contaminated reservoir in the Lake District. Hermione rolled her eyes. Trust her mum to make a fuss – that was hundreds of miles away. Still, she'd stick to hot drinks for the time being. Further down the page was a rather sensationalised account of a farmland fire in which an entire field of ripening wheat had been set alight by stray sparks from a damaged pylon cable. Half-heartedly Hermione flicked through the rest of the paper, scanning the reports: more about the burst water main; aggressive strain of wasp terrorising picnickers in Norfolk; small boy rescues sick owl; power cuts halt performances by the Shakespeare Society; environmentalists warn that acid rain is already taking its toll on our native forests; petrol tanker explodes on M25…

Doom and gloom, she thought, folding up the paper. As she pushed it away from her plate she noticed the letter lying underneath, unopened on the table in front of her. Hermione picked it up. The hand-written address was jammed tight up against the left hand side of the envelope; the stamp was stuck neatly but unconventionally in the bottom right-hand corner. Recognising the writing with a start, she slit open the flap and pulled out a sheet of parchment, her eyes widening in alarm as she read the carefully quilled letter-head: _Malfoy Manor_.

**End of chapter.** OK, a quiet, conventional beginning, but things begin to get more involved in the next chapter…

**Next chapter: A Bit of Earth.** Who has written to Hermione? (Any suggestions?) Why is he/she at Malfoy Manor? What is a cardoon?

**Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the trouble to review. I really appreciate your comments. Ffnet says we're not supposed to post individual replies, so if I don't respond please don't think it's because I'm ungrateful.**


	2. A Bit of Earth

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Thanks to you all for the very encouraging reviews. Sorry, but the letter isn't from Snape. I thought it would be OoC for him to break cover and contact Hermione at this stage. But he does come into later chapters, I promise.**

**Chapter 2: A BIT OF EARTH**

"Hello?" The whisper was absorbed into the humid air, blotted to nothing by thirsty humus and greedy greenery, sucked into muggy silence.

"_Hello_?" Her voice quavered. She should not have come. This was a Bad Idea. One of her worst. Her absolute worst. It was all Ron's fault. If it hadn't been for Ron… What was she trying to prove?

'Apparate directly to the vinery,' the letter had instructed. 'Wear a hat'. Hermione pulled her knitted 'tea-cosy' more closely down over her head and poked back a couple of escaping plaits. Already she was uncomfortable, heat and apprehension jointly flooding her glands, dampening her armpits, pasting her blouse to her back. She thought of the note she had left, propped up against the trinket box on her dressing table - at least the search party would know where to start looking…

"Over here!"

A figure appeared from behind the canoe-sized leaves of a banana palm at the far end of the greenhouse, waving something - a trowel maybe, or a cleaver. He was silhouetted now, standing in a shaft of sunlight – the country might have to wait and hope for an Indian summer, but it had turned into an 'Indian' afternoon. Hermione shielded her eyes against the glare, but a glimpse of gingery, mussed hair had sent her stomach soaring and dipping. Ron? It couldn't be! Feeling foolish she saw that it was merely a trick of the light, reflected from the hot, red brickwork of the rear wall, gilding the world through its rich, sunny filter. She was glad she had not called out his name.

"You got my letter then? I wasn't sure how long Muggle post would take, but with the owl situation being what it is - "

"Neville!" Hermione grabbed him by a plump arm and hustled him back into the cover of the palm leaves. "Neville - this is insane! What are you doing here? Don't you realise how dangerous this is? What are you doing here?" She hissed the last question, repeating herself in her agitation.

"_You're_ here, aren't you?" Neville countered, reasonably enough. "Why are you here then?"

"Me? I…? Well, I… **I'm** here because you sent me that ridiculous letter, aren't I? Do you think I make a habit of popping round to visit the Malfoys? Anyway, that's hardly the point. The point is, why are **you** here? Come on, we should get out before anyone sees us…" She tugged at his sleeve again impatiently, frustrated by his imperturbability, his totally inappropriate lack of urgency.

"You didn't have to come," he said stolidly. "I thought you'd want to hear about - "

"Look, can we please talk about it somewhere else? Somewhere that preferably isn't on the back doorstep of one of our worst enemies…"

Hermione could hear her voice rising, sounding melodramatic and shrill. Making an effort to calm down she said, "OK, Neville, let's just be sensible about this, shall we?" She might have been talking a jumper down off a high ledge. "I've never done Side-Along-Apparation before, but I think I can make it work…"

"No need." Neville smiled broadly, looking suddenly very proud of himself. "I got my Licence. Yesterday. Passed first time. How about that? My gran got it all arranged as a surprise birthday present. Champion, eh? Last term I thought I'd never get the hang of it in a million years, but somehow it finally clicked. Though, to be honest, it still makes me want to puke. Best not to Apparate too soon after lunch. Come and see the garden."

"_What_?" Hermione backed away, alarm and mistrust once more rearing inside her, and whipped out her wand. "_Halquis! Halquis! Halquis(__1_" she intoned, scanning for _Imperius_, using the curse-detector Snape - damn him! - had taught them in DADA. But Neville was clean.

"I've not lost my marbles either," he grinned, savouring the moment, conscious that he was, for once in his life, several steps ahead of Hermione Granger. "There's something I want to show you. You won't regret it, I promise. Keep the hat on till we get beyond the privet arch - your hair's a dead giveaway. Just in case we're spotted. Not much chance of that, but we don't want to take any risks."

Stowing his trowel in the low-slung, multi-pocketed, canvas gardening belt, he sauntered outside, secateurs swinging at his other hip like a Six-gun in a holster.

He's been taking logic lessons from Luna, Hermione decided. Speechless and with many a furtive backward, forward and sideways glance, she sneaked after Neville up the garden path…

XXX

"Whew! About time. Thank goodness," gasped Hermione dragging the tea-cosy off her head and using it to fan her face. "A few more minutes of that and my head would have hatched - like Norbert. What? What is it? Have I got leaves in my hair or something?"

Neville was regarding her with a grave, thoughtful expression.

"_Heliaporus mallisonii!"_ he announced in a 'Eureka' tone of voice.

"If you say so." It sounded like a spell, but, coming from Neville, it was safer to assume it had something to do with plants.

"Your hair - that's what it reminds me of. You look different. It's those twisty tail thingies…"

"Oh, you mean my braids?"

"Aye. 'A profusion of pendulous, rope-like dangling stems…'," he quoted. "_Heliaporus_. Or, maybe, _Aporocactus flagelliformis_ - that means 'whip-like', you see…"

The 'pendulous, rope-like, dangling' braids writhed like Medusa's snakes as Hermione shook her head and leaned towards him. She was not smiling.

"Forget about my plaits, Neville. If you don't tell me what's going on, I'm going to go home and leave you here on your own."

The threat of abandonment didn't faze him as much as she had hoped. Instead of panicking, he looked disappointed.

"That would be a right shame. It's not often as you get a chance to see… No, I won't say. Don't want to spoil the surprise. I don't suppose even Sprouty's ever seen one - you've no idea how incredible… This way - follow me. Oh, and if anyone stops us - not that they will - I'm Trevor."

"Trevor?" Was he nuts? Or stoned? Some of those exotic herbs were only nominally medicinal.

"Let me get this straight, Neville - you're _Trevor_? Like your toad? Neville - Trevor - whoever you are – stop a minute. Look at me…"

Hermione stared intently into his eyes, assessing the size of his pupils, and spoke very slowly. "Has someone Hexed you? Can you remember being Jinxed? Or - " the thought revolted her, " – is this some sick Polyjuice experiment? You're not going to start croaking and eating slugs?"

"Don't be daft, Hermione. What do you think I am?" he laughed.

"At the moment I have absolutely no idea." She was piqued now. "But if this is some kind of a joke, you could have done it somewhere we're not likely to be slaughtered by passing Death Eaters. The Malfoys'd stun us and keep us for torture practice as soon as look at us. And what are our chances of being rescued? About as likely as Nero calling the Fire Brigade, or Voldemort setting up a drop-in centre for underprivileged Muggles. _Trevor_? What's got into you? You're not hoping some misguided princess will rush up and start kissing you? That's frogs, Neville. FROGS!"

When Neville's pace slowed, Hermione congratulated herself that at last she was getting through to him. He had, however, stopped to examine some clumps of partially rotted mulch strewn over the pathway.

"Blasted blackbirds!" he grumbled. "They forage about for beetles and scuffle this top-dressing all over the shop. Thrushes now - they're more like it - they go straight for the snails…" He toed the compost back into the flowerbed.

"Neville! Have you been listening to a single word I've said?"

"Familiarity, that's the key," he said, wiping his shoe on a tuft of vetch. It had to be something I'd react to. People yell 'Trevor' and I jump - comes natural now, second nature… It's generally cos he's escaped again. Wouldn't have been much point calling myself Ludo or Victor or Wronski, now would there?"

"Not unless you were planning on setting up a Quidditch team, no," Hermione replied dryly, wondering where - if anywhere - this conversation was going. Neville ploughed on, a self-sown explorer in search of Helligan(2).

"You wouldn't believe how overgrown it all was - it was obvious no one had been here for months, probably not since Lucius left. Maybe the gardeners all resigned. I bet the Malfoys never used to come out here - probably don't even know it exists. They don't appreciate how lucky they are. All this space going to waste – it's a right shame. The first few days, I did nothing but ground clearance. It's coming on now, but there's still an awful lot left to do… Would have been better, really, to tackle it in the autumn: could have blitzed it with _Incendio!_ - you know, slash and burn approach - but I didn't want to damage the established stock…"

"_First few days! _Do you mean to tell me you've been here _before_? More than once? What do you think this is - a playground?"

_'Mary, Mary quite contrary, How does your garden grow?'_ The rhyme seeds drifted into her mind. One of the disadvantages of a Muggle childhood – you grow up equipped with an inconsequential nursery rhyme for every occasion. Or…

"Neville - this isn't just any old 'bit of earth'! Why didn't you call yourself Mary Lennox and be done with it?3 You can't simply Apparate somewhere and start gardening because it seems neglected. It's trespass, for one thing, and for another it's downright delusional! You're scaring me, Treville - Nevor - oh, whoever…"

"And this isn't even the scary part!" grinned Neville. I can explain it all - and I will – but first you must come and see… We'll talk on the road."

And on that less than enlightening note, he set off once more along the gravel walk.

XXX

"So, as you can see, at some stage the height of the perimeter wall has been raised from twelve to fifteen feet - smart move that - it increases the frost-free margin to at least one hundred feet… that's the equivalent of a seven degree average ambient temperature increase, which, climatically speaking, would put us on an agricultural par with, say, oh, somewhere about a hundred miles south of Paris - and that's before any magical adjustment!"

Neville swept his arm rapturously round the Malfoys' walled kitchen garden and launched into a fervent defence of four-way crop rotation and the advantages of the use of marigolds and nasturtiums in barrier planting. His wand jabbed the air, selecting and pointing as he named the crops for Hermione, counting them into his botanical symphony like the conductor of an edible orchestra.

"South wall – tropical and pinery-vinery (that's the glasshouse where we started); West wall – pears, plums and so on. _Two! One ! One!_ Now, over here they've got courgettes, marrows, potatoes, beans - green beans, broad beans, runner beans… _Three! One!_ Have a taste - "

He snapped off a pea-pod, expertly zipping it open to reveal a tight line of petits pois, sweet and crunchy.

"Brassicas – cabbages, sprouts… _Two! Two!_ All sown far too late in the season – had to use _Accelerated Growth_ Charms. I normally try to avoid them if possible. Roots - parsnips, beet, turnips… _Three!_ Onions, caulis… did I mention broccoli?"

The list went on and on, like a litany. When he'd said they could 'talk on the way' Hermione had thought he intended to put her out of her misery. Now however, as the minutes passed, Hermione, could see her chances of a non-horticultural conversation being diced into vegetable macedoine. Valuing her sight, she lagged a few steps behind, out of range of the energetically waving wand. _He's doing this on purpose; he's enjoying it._

"Thistles?" she queried, standing back to admire a monstrously spiky, eight-foot ornamental specimen. She'd humour him if she had to.

"Cardoon." Neville put her right. Artichokes were no laughing matter. "_Two! Three!_"

At each number a short pulse of magic popped from the tip of his wand - coloured sparks for _Two!_, something paler and more powdery for _One!_ and _Three!_ Curiosity getting the better of her, Hermione had to ask.

"What's with the counting, Neville?"

"Oh, that…" He had stopped to squat beside a laden gooseberry bush, and was deftly tying in the heavily fruiting branch to a supporting cane. "I've pre-programmed my wand with some of the everyday garden spells - saves me trying to remember them every time. The weeds were right up to here," (he tapped his chest) "and it was a bugs' paradise… _One!_ Kills slugs and snails; _Two!_ is for basic weeding; _Three!_ dusts for greenfly… I've programmed up to ten, but to be quite honest after about six I start getting the numbers muddled up anyway. I'm such a dunderhead."

Snape's favourite insult came readily to Neville lips. Hearing it, Hermione eyed her friend acutely. How many times, she wondered, would Neville have had to hear that word for him to assimilate it into his own vocabulary?

"That's all in the past now Neville - no one's going to be calling you that any more."

"No. No, I don't suppose they will. But in some ways Snape was right, wasn't he? I'm chronic. I can't remember the most elementary magic for five minutes. I'm safer not using it, unless I have to. I'm better sticking with my plants and leaving the complicated stuff to clever people like you. 'Save magic for 'mergencies!' that's my motto."

Neville was the first wizard Hermione had spoken to who had managed to articulate Snape's name without the kind of wincing grimace usually reserved for Voldemort. She regarded him thoughtfully but decided to say nothing.

After a sharp shower earlier on in the day, the foliage was still spangled and the air a tangy, aromatic infusion of flavours wafting from the rediscovered currant bushes and espaliered apple trees.

"Smell this!" Neville thrust something green and frondy towards her nose. "No, rub the leaves and then sniff - well? Is that spearmint or what? Isn't it magnificent? And this one - shut your eyes - see if you can guess… Chocolate! That's right - incredible! And come over here - I must just show you this - "

"Neville!" Would she have to shove a tomato in his mouth to get him to shut up? She might as well try to muzzle a manticore. He'd hardly stopped talking since they left the greenhouse - but none of it was what she wanted to hear. Once in the garden, he seemed to shift into a separate dimension of cellulose and chlorophyll, a world where the threat of Death Eaters was no more than a nuisance, no worse than an infestation of downy mildew... He was over-ripe with enthusiasm for the blessed plants – even if they belonged to the Malfoys - happily engrossed in cross-pollination, fruit yields and harvest forecasts. And they hadn't even got to the herbs yet. _How could he be happy? How **dare** he be happy? _He was more than happy - he seemed elated._ Had he forgotten already? Had he moved on so soon? _

"Neville, this is all absolutely wonderful, but I'm afraid I haven't got all afternoon. For the last time, **what is going on**?"

"Shhh!"

They had reached the wrought iron gate which separated the kitchen garden from the yew-hedged herbery. Neville turned to Hermione, his boyish face beatific with wonder.

"Look!"

**End of Chapter. **

**A/N: Re: Neville's dialogue. I have used the occasional 'northern' term or usage as a means of distinguishing Neville's speech patterns from Hermione's, but without going to town on dialect (as I did in 'Payback Time'.)**

**Next Chapter: THE BOROMETZ. Why has Neville lured Hermione into the garden? Does he just want to show her his onions? Is the chapter title a bit of a giveaway? **

1 Halquis – from the Arabic and Latin interrogatives (hal, quis).

2 Helligan - the 'lost gardens' of Helligan which have been reclaimed and restored over the last decade. Cornish tourist attraction.

3 Mary Lennox. cf The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett. Mary asks her guardian if she might have a 'bit of earth' (referring to the abandoned walled garden).


	3. The Borometz

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Seems some of you were fazed by the last chapter. I think canon Neville is underused. I find him a very interesting (though not romantic) character. Don't worry, this is not going to be HG/NL.**

**This chapter is less horticultural, although… well, you'll see.**

**The Borometz is mentioned in early texts, so that part and most of the references are factual. Other more magical aspects are mine, as is the pseudo-Chaucer. (It might be a bit shaky. I'm not a medieval English scholar).**

**Chapter 3: THE BOROMETZ**

_"…there growth a manner of fruite as it were gourdes,_

_and when it is ripe men cut it a sonder, and men fynde_

_therein a beaste as it were of fleshe and bone and bloud,_

_as it were a little lambe without wolle, and men eate the_

_beaste and fruite also, and sure it seemeth very strange."_

_Sir John Maundeville: Travels (1356)_

The tiny creature lifted its even tinier nose to the breeze and sniffed. For an instant it froze on the spot, doe-eyes darting towards the gateway where Hermione and Neville crouched, transfixed. With a skittering side-step, on dancing, cloven hooves it pranced round in a tight circle and stopped again, little legs splayed and rigid, tail twitching. It looked like a ball of cotton, or a miniature lamb, the size of a kitten, totally white and completely, perfectly, adorably woolly.

"Oooh," sighed Hermione, lost for words.

Relaxing, the lamb lowered his baby-soft head and nibbled the grass. Hermione saw that it was tethered, and that its grazing was confined to a small circle.

"What is it?" She mouthed the question, frightened even to whisper for fear of startling the animal. It was, without doubt, the fluffiest, dinkiest, prettiest, cutest thing she had ever seen and - well, she wanted one. Crookshanks' feline charms were coarse by comparison.

Neville put his finger to his lips…

XXX

"A Borometz? I've never even heard of it." And that, coming from Hermione Granger, was quite an admission. First Horcruxes, now this - she was slipping.

"Don't beat yourself up about it, Hermione. They're rare, really rare, fantastically rare – some folks doubt that they even exist. This is just the most amazing, incredible thing! If people knew I'd cultivated a Borometz right through to fruition, this place would be besieged with wizards – Healers, herbologists, historians – the lot! It's just… well… it's…"

Neville sniffed and blinked and smiled, his eyes beaming happiness and achievement.

"Cultivated?"

"Oh, aye. It's a plant, didn't you know? A plant-animal, a zoophyte, whatever you want to call it. Botanically it's either a _cibotium_ or a _dicksonia -_ the big-wigs can't make their minds up. But it's more commonly – commonly, ha! – known as the Vegetable Lamb or, sometimes, the Tartary Lamb. You hardly ever find it listed in herbals these days."

_'Mary had a little lamb'? Stop it, Hermione._

"Tartary? That bit of Eastern Europe that the Tartars overran in the 13th Century?" Geographical history may not have been Hermione's forte, but hers was better than Neville's.

"Don't ask me." Neville pushed out his lower lip and shrugged. "It's in that neck of the woods. But don't let's get hung up over names – Borometz is just the Tartar word for 'lamb', I think, or maybe 'vegetable'. Or maybe it's Syrian, or Scythian – one of the two - something like that. I forget."

"So if I stroked it," asked Hermione, "would it feel warm, or cold?" The technical classification was of less interest than its teddy-bear qualities.

"Warm, probably - wolves attack them and eat them – but I wouldn't try, if I were you. They look sweet, but they bite. So legend has it."

"Legend?"

"About four hundred years ago the Muggles had a real bee in their bonnet about the Borometz - sent expeditions all over the world to track it down. They'd read descriptions in early texts, and they wanted to see one for themselves. Well, you would, wouldn't you? I know I would. Went to China, Persia, Japan, Australia, Russia …

"Eh, but you don't want to be getting it muddled up with _barametz_ – that Russian psychoactive snake oil stuff. That's extracted from the fresh leaves of an Asian evergreen. No similarity at all. I suppose the oil does give off a cloud of thick, white smoke when you heat it, but that's about where the resemblance ends." Having launched off along a lateral branch of thought, Neville found himself dangling in mid-air…

"What were I saying? Oh, yes, there were all these stories in ancient Chinese texts, and they must have got passed on to the Greek scientist people… and then there are accounts by medieval Knights and monks, about the Tartary Lamb… oh, and the French have got their own Frenchified name for it (typical, eh? They would…) - but they never found a live one. All they could come up with was some fern root that the Chinese street vendors carved into crummy animal shapes and flogged to tourists. There was some big, botanical hoo-hah, and the whole thing was denounced as a fraud – or, at least, as unsubstantiated."

It wouldn't have been the first time that accidental sightings of a magical creature had given impetus to Muggle mythology. Think about mermaids. Unicorns. Dragons. Centaurs.

"The real mystery is where the seeds come from in the first place," Neville went on. "I've been looking it up in my gran's books - see, you're not the only one! – and there are no recorded examples of propagating a Borometz from collected seed samples. But guess what? Wizard lore states that the seeds are deposited by phoenixes – in their droppings, you know. But they don't germinate unless the phoenix sings."

"No wonder they're rare," Hermione breathed. _When had anybody last seen Fawkes? Not since Dumbledore's death. _"Shouldn't we be notifying the Ministry? Get it officially on record? There must be a protocol for events like this. I could ask Ron's dad."

"What? And have the place crawling with reporters and photographers? Do you really think Narcissa'd go for that? If I'd wanted publicity I'd have written to Luna - the _Quibbler_ would have a field day. No, it won't be here long; let it live in peace…

"You see, the seed develops into a large fruit rather like a melon," explained Neville, sounding more and more like an extract from _Magical Herbs and Fungi_. "It is carried on a stalk about two feet above the ground. When the fruit ripens it splits open – and there's the lamb, all curled up inside."

"But why does it have to be tied up? Wouldn't it be nice to let it run about?" asked Hermione. "Lambs are frisky things; wouldn't it like to frolic?"

"That's not a leash, Hermione." Neville's face was suddenly deadpan. "That's its stem. It's attached to its navel, like an umbilicus. If you cut it, it dies. The lamb grazes the grass within its reach, and when that's finished, it - um - I'm afraid it dies anyway."

"Oh, no!"

"Aye. Very sad. That's why this is so special, so precious - they only live a few days."

"And then…?"

"The book says it's very pleasant oven-roasted with rosemary, garlic and a sprig of mint!"

Hermione's acid glance pickled him.

"That's not even slightly funny. You wouldn't!" Hermione had occasionally flirted with vegetarianism, but now she found herself questioning whether that option was ethically acceptable either. Neville shook his head.

"Nay. I couldn't. But it would be right criminal of me not to – er – _use_ it, when the time comes… The flesh is recommended in the book as a decoction for _'wardynge off moiste and melancholie humours'_ - a kind of early anti-depressant by the sound of it, as well as being nutritious. Doesn't sound like it's stunningly magical."

"What is this book?" Hermione wanted to know, ready to add it to her mental bibliography.

"It's taken from a manuscript from some medieval monk chap, Friar Odour-something – oh, bummit, I've forgotten his name now. Most of the magical sources are Chinese, and the translations are rubbish. You'd think wizards'd make a better job of it. It's the fleece that has the properties. I knew you'd ask, so I copied this bit out - here."

Fishing a scrap of paper out of his back pocket, he handed it to Hermione. She recognised the same, painstaking script that he had used on the envelope of her letter.

_'Whan that oure worlde with discorde may be rente,_

_Planetes y-turn'd from hir dailye intente,_

_And swich stryfe as disturbeth man or beeste_

_- from righteous Lordes to the very leeste –_

_And men mak woful lamentacioun,_

_The lamb is borne for oure Salvatioun._

_Lo! Soules y-smerte in darknesse and wanhope(__1)_

_Behold, the Lagneau(__2)__ heertes-ease brings, and Hope.'_

Hermione studied the ancient verse, reading it over several times, a frown of concentration crimping her brows.

"Are you positive this is about the Borometz? It sounds biblical to me – the bit about 'salvation'. The guy was a monk though, so I suppose that figures. Christianity did tend to rather hijack lamb imagery. Was he a Muggle, did you say? Must have been, if he was a monk - sorry Neville, silly question. Have you got any corroborative sources - cross-references, any kind of validation?"

"Oh, there are loads of descriptions of the lamb itself, but not many of them talk about the magical powers. It's like they're all so bowled over by how cute it is, they never quite get beyond that. Sort of 'beauty is its own reward' idea. Some of them talk about it bringing the gift of prophetic divination, and others go on about sucking the bones while you're casting spells – can't see how you're going to pronounce the words if your mouth's crammed full of bones… Even the magical sources are vague - they refer to 'benefits' and 'comfort' and 'fulfilling a need' but they're not very specific."

"Oh, come on, Neville. You make it sound like a cup of tea or a hot-water-bottle. What is it - a portable, woolly 'Room of Requirement'?"

Hermione couldn't help thinking that Neville hadn't done his research very thoroughly. He dropped his head, staring down at his feet; up until that moment he'd been feeling proud of his efforts.

"There is another line, later on, where Friar Thingy talks about the 'majyk flees' and 'peace'. I didn't copy it all out because he went off at a huge tangent - half a page describing something totally unrelated and then he said, 'I'm not going to mention all that stuff'. Can you imagine trying that on with Snape - four inches on the interaction of the volatile oils in Lavender and Motherwort, and then write 'but my essay's really about the antiseptic alkaloids in Woundwort'? Or with Slughorn? Would he even notice though – Ron says the Slug Club automatically get Os, and everybody else gets an A. Would have been fine by me - better than straight Ds…"

That was the second time Neville had made an unprompted allusion to Snape. The man had been figuring prominently in all their thoughts recently - but was there any particular reason why memories of the Potions master (Defence Against the Dark Arts master, Hermione corrected herself. Even after a year with Slughorn, it was still Snape whom she associated primarily with Potions) should be preoccupying Neville's subconscious?

They were sitting on a wooden garden bench beneath an arching rose pergola, entwined with sweet briar, climbing dog rose and rugosa, the fragrance of the loose-petalled flowers so potent it smelled artificial. In other circumstances it might have been considered romantic. But the two friends were too engrossed to think about anything or anyone except the Borometz.

"Legend also has it," said Neville, "that the Vegetable Lamb only flourishes under certain, special conditions. At first I thought that meant the soil and the weather - it would explain why the sightings have been in China and the Middle East and not in this cold, duff country – but when I read it more carefully I realised it didn't mean that at all. Listen to this, Hermione."

There was an air of barely suppressed excitement about Neville as he cleared his throat and prepared to quote another passage which, this time, he had evidently memorised. His cheeks were flushing pinker than the roses in the arbour.

"This is from '_Our Herbal Heritage_': _'The appearance of the Borometz can be considered in no wise an arbitrary occurrence. The phoenix, in its infinite wisdom, sheds the seed with care, entrusting it to the custodianship of a worthy servant. It is he who has been chosen to nurture the Lamb. He it is who will identify the hour of need; he in whose hands lies the authority to decide upon whom to bestow the healing power of the Fleece.'_

"Do you hear that, Hermione? Custodian? That's me! I've been Chosen!"

**End of Chapter. **

1 y-smerte: afflicted by; wanhope : Middle Eng. 'despair'

2 Lagneau : French etymology was widely evident in Chaucerian English. (F. 'agneau' – lamb). Lagneau and Borometz were used in England interchangeably until the 15th Century, after which the Tartar term became the more commonly used designation.

**A/N: Google Images has pictures of a Borometz. They are mainly taken from woodcuts, so they don't give a true indication of the cuteness and fluffiness of the 'real' thing.**

**Next chapter: NARCISSA**

**"But that wasn't why I asked you to come," said Neville to Hermione. **

**So why did he? We still don't know why he is at Malfoy Manor. Read on and find out...**


	4. Narcissa

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**Chapter 4:NARCISSA**

"But that wasn't why I asked you to come," said Neville.

"It wasn't? Oh, brother! You mean there's _more_?" Hermione leaned forward on the bench, hardly noticing how the rough, splintery, wooden slats were digging into her legs. She didn't know how much more she could take.

"It's about Narcissa - you know, Draco's mum."

"I **know** who Narcissa is! What about her?"

Hermione was starkly reminded that they were trespassing in the Malfoys' garden. Enthralled by the Borometz, she had forgotten.

"She says that it's fine if I - " Neville began, but he got no further.

"Whoa! Stop! Stop right there, Neville. You're telling me you've _spoken_ to Narcissa Malfoy? Next thing you'll be saying you pop up to the Manor for tea and cakes every afternoon at three o'clock. You don't, do you? You've not actually been inside the place? No? OK, I'll shut up. So, you've spoken to her then? Didn't that strike you as being a trifle _risky_ - not to mention dangerous, irresponsible and unbelievably **stupid**? I suppose you were wearing your camouflage hat - hey? - so that's alright then. I despair of you! …So, what did she say? What happened? When was this? Start at the beginning…"

XXX

**(flashback)**

His gran had offered to tell them, but Neville had wanted to do it himself. He hadn't tried to analyse why it was so important - he just knew that the news had to come from him. Was he secretly hoping that the shock of hearing about Dumbledore's death might trigger a response, exhume memories, awaken those inert cells long lost to the coma of the _Crucio_?

Afterwards, as the lift juddered him down to the ground floor of St Mungo's Hospital, Neville pretended to himself that he was not at all disappointed, that he hadn't really been expecting any sort of reaction, and that he knew better than to hope for miracles… He had left his parents sublimely untouched by events, his father, Frank, contentedly finger-painting his chin with drool, and Alice, his mother, systematically plucking the petals from the flowers he had brought.

By the time the lift doors wobbled open Neville had unclenched his jaw and allowed his features to sag into acceptance. Unremarkable and unremarked, he had stepped out into the foyer and into the throes of a major commotion.

The usual, well-ordered queue of patients waiting patiently at reception had coiled itself into an avid circle of onlookers. Some of them were clearly gunning for blood, like punters at a cockfight; others were more like amused shoppers, stopped in their tracks by an exceptionally talented, scene-stealing pavement busker… Neville craned his neck to see what especially grotesque case of magical malady could have generated such interest. There was a lot of shouting.

At the centre of the ring, a slim woman was arguing loudly and vehemently with a nonplussed Healer Smethwyck. Neville couldn't see her face, but he was struck immediately by the cascade of silver blonde hair that flowed down her back like a waterfall, turning in an instant from a smooth stream to a churning Niagara as she tossed her head in annoyance. It was not so much the length or rippling silkiness of the hair that attracted Neville's attention – it was the colour: a delicate, creamy blonde which reminded him of a bank of pale, wild primroses in the Spring; a meadow sweep of comfrey heads or cowslips; or the bark of the silver birch, luminously yellow in the morning sunlight.

"You rhinoceros lover!" the woman shrieked. No, that couldn't be right. Surely she wouldn't have said that?

"The _Barber_ of _Seville_?" she exclaimed. Neville couldn't hear properly. He made a shushing face at two small girls next to him - ex-best friends – who were squabbling and whining, their hands bound together in a brainteaser of knotted twine, twenty fingers mottling to varying shades of pink and grey and purple as they struggled and the cords correspondingly tightened. They appeared to have been playing Cat's Cradle with a loop of Strangling String. Neville strained to listen above their petulant wails.

"Fresh air! Fresh _air_? My good man, do I look suicidal? Am I a zoo keeper? An equestrian coiffeuse? There are people whose job it is to undertake that sort of lunacy," the woman remonstrated, clearly outraged by Smethwyck latest suggestion. The long-suffering Healer put a professional arm around her shoulder, trying to draw her away into the privacy of an office, but she pushed him brusquely aside. Neville wished the two girls would shut up.

"Just dewdrops? Dewdrops! Is that some absurdity that passes for humour in your pathological echelons?"

Smethwyck mumbled something else which Neville failed to catch, something which was obviously no consolation to the distraught woman.

"Not likely! I'll be bored to death!"

One of the little girls let out a sudden yelp, causing Neville to miss the beginning of the next sentence.

"… - - talent!" she was screaming. "I'm certainly not bowing and scraping for you or him or anyone else. There must be something suitable here - off the peg, so to speak. Isn't that what you types are for?"

Mumble, rumble…

"Tailor-made? Sensitive? Variables? What _size_? Large, of course. Aren't they all?" She flung her arms wide in an exaggerated gesture of despair. "Age? Is that relevant? No, I **cannot** divulge the weight… Oh, this is farcical. I can see I'm wasting my time here."

From her defiant stance it looked as though she was about to storm out, but Smethwyck bent forward to make one last, low-frequency suggestion.

"Stinking hypocrite!" she hurled at him.

With a final, furious toss of her palomino mane, she whirled round and flounced off, her audience shuffling and jostling to move out of her way like penguins in the path of an enraged polar bear. Only Neville stayed where he was, his feet gummed to the floor. The woman striding straight towards him was Narcissa Malfoy.

Neville had only glimpsed her a couple of times in Diagon Alley accompanying Draco on pre-term shopping trips, and she had appeared then as the epitome of pureblood decorum: smart, sophisticated, dignified - the perfect partner for the aristocratic Lucius. A far cry from the screeching, dishevelled fish-wife he had just witnessed.

"Out of my way, boy," she barked, barging past. Neville dodged the wrong way, directly in front of her and they collided heavily. She clutched at his coat to stop herself falling.

"Clumsy oaf!" she spat, and swept on towards the exit. Belatedly Neville moved aside; something crunched under his shoe.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" he trotted after her and, without any thought as to possible repercussions, tapped Narcissa on the shoulder. "Excuse me, you dropped your _Datura stramonium_. I – er – I'm afraid I trod on it. It's crushed. I'm sorry." He held out a wilting, mangled plant.

"Oh, really! That's all I need!" She wasn't remotely grateful. "Keep it. It's no use to me. Disgusting, dirty weed. What did you say it was, boy, a _date_?"

"_Datura stramonium_," Neville repeated, quaking, waiting for the malicious dawn of recognition to stain the clear, periwinkle blue of her eyes. Up close, in her heeled boots, she was taller than Neville, her figure beneath the impeccably cut cloak still attractive for a woman her age - dangerously lovely, like _Datura_ itself, reflected Neville. He pictured the pale, elegant, draping bells of the Devil's Apple flower, unexpectedly exotic on wizened, spiky stems…

Changing her mind, Madam Malfoy snatched the bent stalk and made as though to stuff it into her handbag.

"I'd be careful if I were you," advised Neville, unable to drag himself away. "You don't want to get the sap on your skin - it burns."

"Ugh. And that hack of a Healer expects me to grind it up and stew it and Merlin knows what! Sheer madness. Oh dear. What do I do now? I refuse to go crawling back to that clueless charlatan. Where do I get another one?"

A note of appeal had crept into her voice, defiance displaced by desperation. Neville's mouth felt as though he had been sucking sloe berries and he swallowed nervously.

"_Datura_'s not so difficult to cultivate," he told her. "If you sowed the seeds now, with regular applications of _Magigrow_, you could be cropping within three weeks. It's the harvesting that's the tricky part - it all depends on whether you need the leaves for an infusion or a decoction… Or, if it's the roots you want, you have to remember not to use iron tools when you dig them up. Then again, if it's the pods you're after, you'll need to wait for them to set and ripen…"

Narcissa, composure regained, raked him with critical, cornflower calculation.

"You seem to know an awful lot about it," she said. "What are you, another quack?"

"No. I'm just… I'm a gardener," Neville replied, feeling every moment more like a traitor, a collaborator.

"Good for you, sonny." The unmistakable trace of class condescension was already erecting its invisible wall. "A gardener, you say? Can you lay your hands on some more of those nettles? You can? Excellent. I shall expect you first thing in the morning. Bring the plants with you. Ask for Narcissa Malfoy."

This was a woman accustomed to having her instructions obeyed. If he had been wearing a cap, Neville would have doffed it.

"And you are?"

"Er - pardon?"

"Your _name_, boy. Your name."

For the first time in the entire conversation, Neville Longbottom thought quickly.

"Trevor. Trevor Bluebottle."

**(end flashback)**

XXX

"Oh, Neville, what have you done? How could you? You do realise you're probably helping Voldemort poison the planet? Why do you think _Datura_'s a restricted herb? You can't just go to any old Apothecary and buy it, can you? Not fresh, anyway. Because it's _lethal_. It's not like Chamomile tea or a Horsetail hair rinse. Why didn't you say 'no'?"

Dismayed, Hermione passed severe judgment. Neville stooped to snap off a bent asparagus fern, swished the air with a few swipes and then, disconsolately, began shredding the plumes.

"You didn't see her, Hermione. She was upset. She was almost hysterical when she was with Smethwyck. Deranged even. And then when the plant got spoiled she was angry, but she looked more scared than anything. I don't know why she needs it, but she's frightened of what's going to happen if she doesn't get it."

"Precisely! She's taking it to Voldemort. Anybody'd be scared of stalling him," Hermione reasoned. "Crucio job."

"Not for the first time," Neville muttered.

"What ?"

"I'd say she's already been Crucio-ed," said Neville flatly. "She's got that 'lost' look, a kind of emptiness behind the eyes… she loses track of what she's saying… and the jumpiness too - you know, twitchy, nervy… She's not like Snape, she wouldn't know how to block it - "

"You can't block an Unforgivable, Neville."

"Alright then, 'parry' it - isn't that what Harry said Snape did, when he tried to Crucio him that night?"

Hermione didn't have to ask which night.

"That day at St Mungo's she was in such a state, so out of her element - I didn't think about her being a Death Eater, or anything… And she didn't understand the first thing about taking cuttings… I had to help her. She were upset," Neville insisted.

His stout defence of the woman had planted a sickening suspicion in Hermione's fertile mind.

"Neville," she said as gently as she could, "she's _Draco's_ mother, not yours…"

"I know that! Do you think I don't know that?"

Hands in pockets he strode away a few yards and stood scuffing his shoes in the gravel, stamping out the green slug of envy that had been chomping lacy holes in his common-sense.

Hermione's footsteps crunched on the gravel behind him.

"So," she began, as soon as she was sure she was within earshot. "So, you're working for Narcissa. And I'm assuming you've brought her the plants - yes? You've done what she asked. So now, _please_, Neville, leave her some instructions on how to pick the leaves and get out - while you still can. It's only a matter of time before you're caught. It's way too dangerous."

Neville looked her squarely in the eye.

"You wouldn't say that if I were Harry," he stated. "When _Harry_ does something brave you think he's daring and courageous, and he's a Gryffindor hero. When _I_ do something risky you call me stupid. That prophecy could just as easily have been about me, you know - maybe it's not Harry who's going to be the one who saves the wizarding world. Maybe it'll be me! Oh, you'd all hate that, wouldn't you? Squibby Neville getting something right for a change."

_How much did Neville know about the Prophecy? What had he heard? Harry hadn't wanted anyone else to know – apart from herself and Ron. She wasn't sure if he'd even told Ginny. The trouble was, Neville could be so quiet and nondescript that sometimes you forgot he was there. Had he heard them talking about it? Today he wasn't unassuming though; he was primed with energy_.

"Think about it, Hermione - it wasn't a coincidence that I bumped into Narcissa that day at St Mungo's - it was destiny. If I hadn't met her, I wouldn't have come here, and I would never have discovered the Borometz. It's all Fate. I've been Chosen."

He turned to face her, stubbornly assertive, his colour heightened with emotion, a deep brick red suffusing his cheeks, displacing the healthy pink.

_Could it be true? Hermione had never doubted that Harry was the Chosen One, marked for fame and glory. But what if Neville was right? Or what if they had **both** been selected to play a definitive role in the history of wizardkind?_

"Just supposing you're right, Neville," Hermione conceded. "What do we do next?"

The gardener answered confidently.

"There's a limit to how many _Growth Charms_ I can use. There's only one thing we can do: wait for the Borometz to ripen and the _Datura_ to mature."

You can't rush Mother Nature.

**End of chapter.**

**Next chapter: BIRD BY BIRD. So who does Narcissa want to poison? Why does she need those herbs? Hermione has a theory. So does Hagrid.**

**A/N: Heartfelt thanks to my faithful reviewers.**


	5. Bird By Bird

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Thanks all. Maybe it is only AK that can be blocked. Hmm, how to get out of that one? Maybe blocking Unforgivables is a 7th year topic, and up until then they lump all three together as being dangerous and unblockable (to stop younger students experimenting?)**

**Thanks, Cecelle for the 'locoweed' reference. I'll add it in to this chapter.**

**Chapter 5 :BIRD BY BIRD**

The next morning there was another bizarrely addressed envelope waiting on the breakfast table for Hermione. Still no _Daily Prophet_ though. Still no letter from Ron.

**_'Dear Hermione,_**

_**Good thing you left when you did. Not long after, N came into the garden with B and they had a big row.'**_

Judging from the terse style, Neville had written the note in a hurry, possibly in order to catch the last afternoon post. At least he'd had the nous not to spell out the real names. B? The parchment trembled in Hermione's hand as she realised that Neville had to be describing an altercation between Narcissa and her sister. She prayed that he'd had the sense to stay out of sight - all that 'Trevor' nonsense wouldn't fool Bellatrix for a second. She'd recognise him instantly from the battle in the Ministry.

_**'B came poking about round the **_**Datura_ plants and said they looked ready to cut (they're not; couple more days). Then she asked N where she'd got them from and N said from the 'fat urchin' who does the garden (huh!). B said wasn't that a contradiction in terms? B said he (Y-K-W ?) was getting impatient because he (S?) couldn't do his job properly without them. N said she trusted her gardener (!). B said he (D?) was a liability and had stuffed things up for everyone and he (D?) had to suffer the consequences. Then she said that he (Y-K-W ?) could not wait much longer and that if she (N?) didn't get her act together the consequences could be fatal. N was crying that he (D?) was just a boy and that it wasn't his (D's?) fault. B called her a 'snivelling blonde bimbo' and said it was up to N to sort things out p.d.q. or else…_**

_**Thought you'd be interested. Have been thinking: maybe D took a spell during the fighting and needs medical help. Or maybe Y-K-W has punished him. Otherwise why was N at St M's?**_

_**Love, Neville.**_

The 'love' part of the signature made Hermione smile. It was the only straightforward thing in the whole letter, sweet and uncomplicated. It was obvious Neville had written it without even thinking, like signing a birthday card to his gran or his parents. She could imagine Ron agonising over that single word, debating whether it implied too deep a level of commitment, whether Hermione would read too much into it, whether to leave it in or take it out, whether to keep it but spell it 'luv' because that sounded less serious… or whether he fondly believed it would have her swooning with pleasure, or doodling round the four letters in lavender (ooh, bad choice of colour) ink, enclosing it in heart-shaped squiggles with an arrow piercing its centre, and their initials…

So, Voldemort was unimpressed with Draco's performance, was he? That was how Neville read the situation. Did that explain Narcissa's involvement? Was she trying somehow to atone for her son's failure? Hermione almost found herself feeling sorry for Draco - he'd screwed up his first dark Death Eater challenge. Lucius wouldn't be too thrilled either, when he got to hear of it, though he was hardly in any position to criticise his son. And Snape had bailed him out at the last minute and was now working for Voldemort. It certainly sounded that way.

Theories and suppositions were sprouting in Hermione's brain like cress on a sponge. But what she needed was facts. Packing her bag with a notebook, quills, an unopened half-bottle of '_Famous Old Grouse'_ and two tins of Crookshanks' favourite '_Mousey Morsels_', she prepared to Apparate to Hogwarts.

XXX

Sometimes, Hermione mused, things slot into place perfectly, as though they've been planned. You know the sort of things: milkman actually delivers milk _before_ breakfast; cat sicks up chewed grass outside, _before_ coming back into the kitchen; friend meets enemy witch in hospital foyer, gets offered cushy holiday job, discovers legendary talisman…

Sitting in her favourite bay in the eerily deserted library at Hogwarts, Hermione reflected that, even though she hadn't touched a drop of _Felix Felicis_ since the end of term, she felt this was going to be a lucky day.

Psyched up for a confrontation with Filch, and willing, if necessary, to resort to bribery, grovelling and (if pressed to the limit) to revealing the location of a stash of _Skiving Snackboxes_, in order to gain access to the library, Hermione had been delighted when it was Hagrid and not the curmudgeonly caretaker who had stumped down to the main gate.

"Hello Hermione. I'm not allowed ter let anyone inter the grounds," Hagrid announced, unlocking the magical chain with his singed umbrella and holding open the gate for her to pass. "Unless," he now spoke with slow emphasis, quoting regulations, "they can supply proof of identity and can produce the password when prompted ter do so."

Stepping under his raised arm, as through a Gothic archway, Hermione thought to herself that it was a little late for formalities.

"How are you, Hagrid?" she asked, aware that the reserve of the past year was not entirely forgotten.

"Can' complain. Can' complain," the half-giant grunted, looking glum but pleased to see her nonetheless.

For the next few minutes Hermione fended questions about Harry (concerned, conspiratorial nods from Hagrid…) and Ron (sympathetic, suggestive winks from Hagrid…). When she enquired about the fire, the massive shoulders slumped.

"More like a flood, if yeh ask me. Tha' _Aguamenti's_ more powerful than I thought. Perhaps me an' Harry shoulda only used it the once… Eh, everything was charred, like a batch o' rock buns. The other teachers 'av bin helpin'. Professor McGonagall transfigured me some furniture, but I couldn' be doin' with it. It was too new. I wanted me old stuff back. Professor Flitwick did me some Agein' Charms on the table and so on. Better now; more homey. Not the same as if…"

_…as if Professor Dumbledore had been here? No, nothing would ever be the same again._

Hermione explained that she had some pre-term Potions research to do, implying without explicitly stating that she was here with Professor Slughorn's permission and approval.

"Ah, that's alrigh' then." Hagrid trustingly unspelled the door of the castle. Since Aragog's funeral he had had more time for the Potions master whom he had previously referred to (though never intentionally in the students' hearing) as a 'fat, slimy parasite' or a 'two-legged Lobalug' or merely 'Pineapple chunk'. "Come over fer tea when yer done. I could do wi' a bit of a chat," Hagrid invited.

XXX

The books stacked on the table in front of her could be divided into three categories: Mythological, Healing and Herbological. Lesser scholars might have baulked at the task, but Hermione was undaunted. When faced with an overwhelming, seemingly insuperable quantity of information, her approach was systematic, methodical and persevering. Years ago she had read a piece of advice which had impressed her enormously at the time and had stayed with her ever since. It was advice given by a father to his ten year old son trying to do a project on ornithology: 'Take it bird by bird'(1).

So, picking up _'Magical Mythology'_ Hermione turned to the index and began. Bird by bird. Lamb by lamb.

It soon became patently clear that Neville's own research had been more thorough than Hermione had given him credit for. The Borometz was an elusive and enigmatic vegetable, she concluded, as her list of page references yielded little but inconclusive, anecdotal evidence. Though, if all the 'chosen' custodians or witnesses of the Borometz guarded the secret as jealously as Neville, it was hardly surprising that hard data was in short supply. She ticked the texts off, one by one: Dioscorides, Heroditus, Theophrastus, Baron von Herberstein… There was even a version of the Hebrew legend in which the_ yidoni_ of the Talmud is said to grow as a lamb rather than a humanoid.

Hermione's brain was woolly with ovine observations. As light relief she turned to the woodcuts and illustrations: Duret's _Histoire Admirable des Plantes _showedan uncomfortable lamb balanced on a sturdy navel like a sheep-shaped lollypop on a stick. The only photograph - the Lambeth Lamb(2) - was a four-legged but otherwise unrecognisable lump of carved rootstock.

European herbologists placed the Borometz almost unequivocally in the realms of the legendary, the extinct or imaginary. Hermione doggedly turned to the great oriental master-work : the _Nei Jing_, medical classic of the Yellow Emperor, and his followers Li Shizhen, Hua Tuo, Zhang zhongjing… Here she found recipes for the flesh, the fleece and wincingly specific portions of its anatomy, but it was listed only as an acknowledged component of traditional Chinese herbal medicine.

Even the wizard world, while conceding its existence, was sceptical of the Lamb's putative powers. Hermione, remembering the soft, white creature, daintily nibbling its way to a certain, circumscribed death, didn't know or especially care if the Vegetable Lamb was magical, but she knew it was not fictitious.

By contrast, the information available on_ Datura_ could have filled several volumes. Its various names alone took up half a page: Stinkweed, Jimsonweed, Jamestown weed, Hierba del Diablo, Devil's Weed, Charnico, Herbe aux Sorciers, Thornapple, Locoweed, Mad Apple, Devil's Apple.

Hermione took copious notes, listing the properties of several species and cross-referencing them with their medical applications. _Datura_ was one of those versatile herbs that seemed to do everything. Depending on which part of the plant you used – the leaves, flowers, pollen, sap, seeds, stem or roots - it could serve as a poison, narcotic, anaesthetic, aphrodisiac, antiseptic, stimulant, relaxant or hallucinogenic; it was an essential ingredient in numerous potions. Highly toxic (poisonous if improperly handled) it was rated with five cautionary stars on _Magical Medicine's_ 'severely restricted' list, though it was agreed to be uniquely effective in therapeutic doses.

Blah, blah… Hermione skimmed through more recipes for _Datura_ tinctures, creams, drenches and decoctions than she would have believed possible. Blah, blah… She was losing interest now. Much of the information was fascinating in itself, but of little relevance to the job in hand.

The Mexican and ancient Aztecs, she read, embraced the harmful, visionary side-effects with the self-destructive, compulsive greed of hamsters in a store of sunflower seeds. They would drink it, chew it or smoke it, incorporating it into their religious, divinatory and shamanistic rituals, living in a semi-permanent state of _Datura-_induced euphoria and ensuring for themselves an early but colourful one-way trip to the Underworld.

Shaking the cramp out of her writing hand, Hermione decided that enough was enough and it was time to take Hagrid up on his offer of a cup of tea.

XXX

Hagrid wasn't in his hut, so while she waited for him to come back, Hermione leaned on the fence watching Buckbeak - _Witherwings_ - in his paddock. The purpose of this enclosure was beyond Hermione, as the Hippogriff was not tethered and could have flown off at any moment if he so chose. Presumably Hagrid hadn't thought of that. The beast was pecking half-heartedly at a small, furry mess - a dead ferret by the look of it, though Hermione didn't want to investigate too closely – but to the girl's untrained eye he looked bored rather than hungry. Catching sight of her, he emitted a guttural screech, tossed the ferret into the air with a flick of his sabre-sharp beak, caught it again and swallowed it in one fluid, ferocious movement. Then, deliberately, he paced across the grass, stopping a mere twenty feet away, snorting and pawing the ground with his talons. Hermione could see the whites of his eyes.

"Good Buckbeak. There's a good boy. Nice boy," faltered Hermione, thinking that if ever there was a time for bowing this was most definitely it. Aided by the jelly-legs effect of being out-stared by an unpredictable, only notionally tame, flesh-eating orniped, Hermione wobbled into a low curtsey. Anxious aeons elapsed before the Hippogriff warily but unmistakably ducked his head.

He backed off when she first stroked him, rearing his head away from her touch, wide eyes flashing. She reached up and stroked again, trying not to flinch, wishing that there were some sort of hormonal 'occlumency' to mask the scent of her fear. Slowly the rhythm of her hands started to sooth the animal. She worked across his winged withers and back, over the grey haunches towards the swishing tail, massaging the tense muscles bunched beneath the skin, feeling them beginning to relax.

"Hermione!"

With murmurs of 'goodbye' and 'good boy' and 'thank you', Hermione edged away. Assisting her over the fence with almost unseemly haste, Hagrid glowered at her.

"Didn' yeh learn nothin' in me classes? Nothin' at all?"

Hermione hoped it was a rhetorical question.

"Don' yeh remember me sayin' you must never, _never_ walk round the back side of a Hippogriff? Them back legs'll kick yeh as high as the Astronomy Tower."

"He was fine; he wanted to be friendly." Hermione stretched the truth so thin you could have used it to trace a map of the castle.

"Well, yeh was lucky, that's all I can say," muttered Hagrid darkly. "Since the fire, Buckbeak - I can' be doin' with all that 'Witherwings' baloney, leastways not in the holidays – he's 'ad the very devil in 'im. He could have slashed yer hand off, or trampled on yeh, or gored yeh ter death."

But Hermione had known it was going to be a lucky day…

"Shouldna yelled at yeh," Hagrid apologised. "Least said soonest mended, eh?" His attempts to be cheerful were far from convincing. "Bin a rocky old few weeks since the… the… the funeral." A single commando tear slipped silently out of one eye and took cover in the dense undergrowth of his beard. "And with the fire an' all, and now the birds and the - " The final word was drowned in a hearty sniff, but it sounded worryingly like 'bees'. Hermione feared she might be on the verge of far too much information.

"How's Fang?" she enquired hastily. "Is he better now?"

"Eh, he'll do, he'll do." Hagrid's whole demeanour softened at the mention of the hound. "Developed quite a taste for Burn Balm, he has: keeps lickin' it off. Got through six pots in a fortnigh'. Yeh'll see him in a minute. How abou' that tea?"

"Buckbeak looks a lot happier now than he did at Sirius' house. He must like living with you, Hagrid." This winning flattery elicited a sceptical 'harumph', but the gamekeeper was already half won over. He could never stay cross with Hermione for long. "A Hippogriff bite's not fatal anyway, or is it?" she asked next, making conversation as they walked to the hut. She was trying to avoid looking into the bucket Hagrid was carrying, which appeared to be full of dead, defrosting baby mice. She prayed he wasn't nursing another ailing Acromantula. "Draco recovered alright, didn't he? In our third year I mean." (As if Hagrid would have forgotten his first and almost last lesson as Care of Magical Creatures teacher.) "I know he kept that silly sling on for days, but that was all part of his martyr act, wasn't it?"

"Shoulda left that two-faced runt ter fester. No need for all that hollerin' and carryin' on. He got the antidote in plenty o' time. History onyx (3) - that's what it were."

Hagrid swung the bucket higher with each stride. Any moment now Hermione saw herself being bombarded with a shower of frozen pinkies, their little bodies curled cold and hard like verminous, four-footed hailstones.

The first thing Hermione noticed on entering Hagrid's hut (she would have had to be blind and wearing nose-plugs not to notice) was that it was full of owls. Owls of every conceivable type and size: barn owls, tawny owls, long and short-eared owls, screech owls … Asleep, roosting quietly or blinking sleepily, they were everywhere: perched on the backs and arms of chairs, on the curtain rails, the window sills; there was even a scraggy Skops owl balanced precariously on Hagrid's wooden mug-tree next to the cracked, commemorative Hogwarts mug.

"What on earth?" Hermione exclaimed, covering her nose and trying not to breathe in the foetid, feathery fug.

"Saves me traipsin' up ter the Owlery all hours of the day and night. Can keep an eye on 'em better in 'ere. Tea?"

With a sweep of his huge, beaver-skin sleeve across the table, Hagrid cleared a space of droppings and detritus, and plonked a mug in front of her.

"Yeh've not bin readin' yer _Prophet_, have yeh?" he remarked. " 'Bout the owls an' all."

"I would if I could," Hermione protested indignantly. "The shop's messed up the delivery for the past week. I've been meaning to have a word with them. They owe me a refund."

"Nothin' ter do wi' the shop - it's the owls. Poor blighters. Look at 'em."

Hermione did look. Now that he mentioned it, the birds did seem off-colour. She had assumed they were dopey because they were nocturnal. Looking more closely she could see that they were moulting, their plumage drab and bedraggled, bare patches of grizzled skin showing through the feathers. Neville had also said something about owls, hadn't he, but at the time she hadn't taken much notice.

"What's wrong with them? Are they dying?"

"Not if I can 'elp it. But they're proper poorly – won' fly, won' eat. No way they'd be up ter de-liverin' a pygmy vole, let alone a letter. And it's not jus' Hogwarts' owls neither, it's all over the country. Blessed if I know what's goin' on."

Hagrid ran his great fingers through his shaggy matt of hair and then suddenly slammed his mallet of a fist onto the table. Hermione and half a ton of dubious debris jumped a foot into the air; the owls shifted lethargically on their perches. Fang gazed up from his basket, his bald tail thumping at the sound of his beloved master's voice.

"I jus' don' know how ter help 'em!" cried Hagrid. He was near to tears again. The floodgates had been opened at the funeral, and it didn't take much to set him off.

"Is it some new strain of Avian flu? One that only affects owls?"

Hermione was thinking about Harry - he'd be devastated if anything happened to Hedwig. Somehow she didn't think Ron would be too bothered about Pig - he'd never loved him the way he once did Scabbers. Not that it would help much but… Hermione fished the whisky and tins of cat food out of her bag.

"Here. I brought these to bri- as a present for Mr Filch and Mrs Norris. Would you like them, Hagrid? Maybe you could tempt the owls with 'Mousey Morsels'."

Hagrid looked doubtful, but he pounced on the half-litre whisky bottle.

"Thank yeh, Hermione. I'm partial ter these 'ere miniatures."

The presents provided only a brief distraction. Hagrid shook his head sorrowfully and resumed his ecological lament.

"And if it's not the owls, it's the trees! What's happenin' ter the world?"

"Birds _and_ trees?"

"Look out the winder at the lake. Pretty, innit, with all them colours? Yeh might call it 'autumnal'. But it's only the beginnin' of August! They're dyin', Hermione. Oak trees, holly trees, willow trees, ash trees…"

"In other words, _wand_ trees," summarised Hermione.

"I hadna thought of it like that, but yeah. Somebody's got it in fer us wizards."

_And I wonder who that could be?_

_xxx_

The girl set her mug down, matching its base to an existing, pale tea-ring on the wooden table (Flitwick had done his job well), twisting it into a perfect fit. Hagrid, equally thoughtful, picked up an owl dropping and dipped it into a puddle of spilt tea, watching the brown liquid soaking up through the nugget like espresso on a sugar cube. Hermione (who had always considered her mother's kitchen hygiene – intermittent blitzes with an antibacterial wipe – to be on the poor side of perfunctory) shuddered and looked away.

"It's all my fault!" Hagrid burst out. (First McGonagall, and now Hagrid.) The dismal wail foghorned round the hut through mists of misery. "I shoulda kept me big mouth shut. Tha' treacherous turncoat! The number of times Harry and yeh lot said yeh didn' trust him. But did I listen? No, I goes tellin' Harry not ter go readin' too much inter it…"

Hermione would have liked to argue that she had never accused Snape of being untrustworthy, but Hagrid didn't look in the mood for debate.

"There's nothing you could have done, Hagrid. If Snape was intent on…" She had been going to say 'fulfilling his Vow', but at the sound of the hated name Hagrid cut in.

"Azkaban's too good fer that double-dealin' dibble. Dementors are too good fer 'im. Suck out his soul? He hasn' got one. Know what I'd like? I'd like ter see him locked without a wand in a room full o' Boggarts. And when he's screamin' fer mercy, I'd drown him in a barrel o' boilin' brimstone, and put Bowtruckles ter bite out his eyeballs, and peg him out like one o' his dissectin' specimens, and pour poisonous potions down his scrawny throat till he choked, and then I'd string him up by his – er – whatsits and let Buckbeak and the Thestrals fight over his entrails…"

Hagrid had obviously been giving the matter some serious thought.

Knowing she was had little hope of shaking such an entrenched dislike, Hermione still thought it worth making a couple of points. She might never change Hagrid's mind but she might make him think.

"But why _then_, why that night of all nights? If Snape was determined to kill Professor Dumbledore he could have done it anytime over the past sixteen years. It doesn't make sense. Why didn't he do it that night when they had the argument – it would have been the perfect opportunity. You heard him, Hagrid - did he sound murderous?" _Defiant? Reluctant? Upset? _

"No, but…" Hagrid floundered, then recovered his prejudices. "He woulda done it, but he was bidin' his time; waitin' fer a signal. Doin' that darned Draco's dirty work fer him. Vowin' ter protect that whey-faced ferret. They look after their own, the Death Eaters; they're all as bad as each other. Putrid pig-swill the lot of 'em!"

"But what if he had a reason - you know, for what he did?" she urged.

Hagrid turned hostile eyes upon her.

"Surely yer not defendin' that murderin' monster?"

"No. No. I just think he should be given the chance to explain his motives. He deserves a fair trial like anyone else."

"He deserves ter rot in Hell!"

"Did you know he was a Half-blood, Hagrid?" Hermione didn't want to dwell on the subject of Snape's eternal torment; she imagined his life was hell enough already.

"Half-blood, pure-blood – what does it matter? In the end he sided with that evil, melagomaniac bastard… How could he? A great man, Dumbledore. The kindest, wisest, gentlest wizard that ever lived…"

Another tear halted on his eyelid, made a quick 'reccy' and tracked his comrade into the bush.

"Hagrid, have you ever seen a Borometz?" Hermione asked out of the blue, wanting to take his mind off the owls, the trees, Snape, Dumbledore…

"Borometz? That's one of them pockrifuls, innit?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"A pockriful. Yeh know, made up. Don' exist. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. I read about one somewhere, that's all." She sighed, standing up. "I should be going. I've got to write a letter."

The half-giant supped his cold tea, feeling in some indefinable way that he had let her down, though he couldn't for the life of him fathom why or how. There was a faraway, dreamy expression on the girl's face that he had never noticed before. She was playing with some long strands of loose hair, winding them absent-mindedly around one finger and then rolling them slowly back and forth until they twisted themselves into a ring.

"Eh! Don' let Ron catch yeh at that," he joked, comprehension crinkling his eyes. "Poor lad'll run a mile…"

**End of chapter. Hagrid has unknowingly confirmed Hermione's theory. Will she be writing to Ron, or someone else?**

**Next chapter: THE WEAKEST LINK. Hermione takes a trip to Lancashire. Neville takes a reality check. The Borometz takes its place in the scheme of things.**

1 'Bird By Bird' by Anne Lamott.

2 Lambeth Lamb. On display at Lambeth Museum of Garden History, England.

3 Histrionics: exaggerated, stagy, hypocritical behaviour


	6. The Weakest Link

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: This and the next chapter go together as they both take place at Neville's grandmother's cottage. Together they were too long for a single chapter, so I have split them… (that's why this one is a little short).**

**Chapter 6:THE WEAKEST LINK**

Long into the summer night, long after her parents had performed the regular night-time locking-up routine (TV – unplugged; lights – switched off; back door – bolted; front door – locked; dishwasher – on), observed with the ritual precision of pilots clearing for take-off, Hermione sat up in bed, pages of notes and jottings spread out across the covers, checking and rechecking the facts, weaving in the occasional strand of supposition, a few theoretical threads… and thinking. Mostly thinking.

It was very late by the time she finally clicked off the bedside lamp and eased Crookshanks out from his cosy wigwam under her bent knees, so that she could stretch out and lie down. At last she fell asleep, a hopeful smile on her lips, as though the white, woolly Borometz itself were snuggled in beside her.

XXX

The front door of the cottage was ajar. Hermione stuck her head in and called.

"Neville?"

"In the kitchen. Come on through."

Trusting to instinct, she followed her nose – and the smell of cooking. He was bending over, peering into the open stove, a quilted mitt swaddling his left hand. Hermione was too late to do anything but wince as he reached into the hot oven with his other, ungloved hand and extracted a tray of freshly baked Eccles cakes(1). Shooting up like a pink-faced, plump jack-in-the-box, he leaped across the kitchen in a shocked pirouette. It said a great deal for his self-control that he managed to get the tray into the air space above the table before dropping it with a yell.

"By 'eck! I always do that! _Why_ do I always do that?" he exclaimed, grabbing his arm and flapping the scorched fingers frantically as though trying to shake them off at the wrist.

Hermione grinned. Some things never changed. Neville Longbottom never changed.

"Here. Run them under the tap." Hermione steered her jigging friend towards the sink, reminded of the time at school Draco had zapped him with _Tarantallegra_. You could always depend on Neville to dance in a crisis! There was an almost audible hiss as scarlet skin met cold water. "Have you any lint? You want to cover those before they blister."

But Neville was clumsily, one-handedly unscrewing the lid of a pot of clear, green-tinted gel which he had taken off the window sill. With a sigh that sounded almost blissful he plunged his fingers into the goo.

"Sorry 'bout that. Happens all the time - I never remember… Mitt…hand…hand…mitt…" He held up one gloved and one potted hand for inspection, waving them apologetically, incongruous puppet players in a kitchen sink drama.

"There are spells for that kind of thing, you know. Easy ones. _Protego!_ Or _Desensio!_ There's a whole list of them in '_Enchantment in Baking'_ – Ron's mum's got a copy. I'll have a look next time I'm there." _If I'm ever there again._ "Or what about a mild Cooling Charm? It must be better than burning your fingers."

Neville shrugged and Hermione could tell that he didn't want her to interfere.

"I tried those," he mumbled. "Got frostbite twice, and when I tried _Desensio!_ my hands went so numb I crushed all my Shrivelfig seedlings. I dropped the teapot too. Couldn't hold my wand for two days. Couldn't even use a knife and fork."

"So your gran had to cut up your food – how ignominious," Hermione sympathised .

Neville humphed.

"Did she 'eck! No, she did _Liqueficio!_ and conjured me a straw!"

He looked away, suddenly busy, wiping gel-slimed fingers down the front of his apron. (Apron? Hermione was tempted to call it a 'pinny' - she wondered about Neville, sometimes.) The redness of the burn had faded and there was no blistering or, apparently, pain.

"It's incredible stuff this," he said evasively, screwing the lid back on. "My gran's own secret blend of Better Balm, Painless Potion and a variety of Aloe Vera extracts. Analgesic, antiseptic and an effective moisturiser all in one! If she sold it on the open market she'd make a fortune. Full of surprises is my gran. You got my note then?"

Hermione sat watching him bustling to find plates, knives, mugs, incongruously at home in the kitchen. Or, almost - he plonked a frosted jar onto the table.

"I'm afraid the jam's frozen. I must have put it in the cupboard which has the Cooling Charm. The butter, on the other hand, is extremely spreadable…" He swilled it slowly to and fro in its dish. "Have a cake. Help yourself. You can eat them by themselves, but they're even better with a blob of jam on top… Oh, lumme, where's the sand?"

Had this been Ron talking it would have been a trick question, or one of his terrible jokes. Hermione was debating whether to answer 'In the sandwich' or 'In the Sahara', when Neville seized a small hour-glass egg-timer that had buried itself beneath a tea-towel, and rushed out of the room, returning much more sedately only seconds later.

"Promised gran I'd turn the Burdock pods every hour," he explained, "and the Lovage. A lot of the trees are setting their seeds early this year and we're overrun with all the drying - still catching up with the summer fruits, you see; not geared up for autumn yet. Gran says it's a harbinger." Of what he wasn't completely sure.

Hermione sipped her tea, saying nothing as yet; Neville chipped away at the block of jam, gouging out an occasional iced raspberry.

"That was scrumptious!" Hermione pressed the last sweet flakes up with her fingertip and dabbed them onto her tongue. "I had no idea you could cook, Neville. Is it a new hobby?"

Pink cheeks grew pinker.

"Me? What? Oh no, no, no - not me! Though I can throw a few leaves together to make a salad if I have to…"

Judging by his waistline, he hardly looked as though he survived on salad.

"My gran made these."

"She's still all right then?"

"Strong as an iron clog! She'll outlive us all, my gran!"

Were they going to sit around making cream-tea small-talk about Neville's family all afternoon? Hermione was bursting to tell him her theories, but first she wanted to hear what was so important that he had asked her to Apparate all the way up to his grandmother's cottage.

"I was going to write to you, but you beat me to it. Your note - you said there were two things?" _As if she couldn't guess._

"Mm, yeah." Neville's head dipped and nodded, like a sleek seal swallowing a fish, as though that would hurry the crammed, jammy mouthful down his throat. He dashed a flipper across his lips, wiping away some sticky crumbs. "The first thing is that the _Datura_'s ready. I lifted the first plant for Narcissa this morning; the root's sufficiently developed to obtain a reasonable extract. She says she's going to need one every day for at least a week. So we've got seven days to work out how she's getting it to Draco. What do you think we should do - follow her?"

_A week? That tallied with the recommendations in Healers' Herbal._ Hermione was positive she was on the right track.

"If you can work out a way to tail her when she Apparates. It's not going to be that simple. OK, let's get back to that in a minute. What's the second thing? And, by the way, how did you manage to get that note delivered? Did you find an owl? You surely didn't Apparate all the way to my house just to post a letter, and then leave without saying hello? Even you wouldn't be so - "

"Did you step over a pool of vomit on your way out? No? Well, can't have been me then," said Neville ruefully. "How is it twerps like Fred and George can Apparate just like 'that'," (he snapped his fingers), "whereas I … No, I got my gran to drop it off on her way to W.I."

"W.I.?" That would account for the jam and cakes then(2).

"Witchcraft Incantation class. She only goes along for the gossip. They have a coven meeting every month on Pendle barrow. I told her we're working on a secret project for the Order, and I needed to contact you urgently."

"Neville, you didn't!"

"She didn't mind. Makes her feel useful. And you can't start getting self-righteous with me, not after all your dodgy stuff with McLaggen last term."

"How do you know about that? You won't tell Ron?"

So she hadn't exactly been Miss Scrupulously Honest… She wasn't proud of it, but Ron's constant canoodlings with Lavender had made her see red - purple – whatever! Who'd been talking? Ginny? Luna? Why was her relationship with Ron always so complicated? On top of everything else, she added 'exploiting grandparents' to the mental list of misdemeanours she had committed over the past weeks.

"I'm staying well out of it," muttered Neville.

Unwinding a cord from a metal cleat on the wall, Neville gently lowered the drying rack down from the ceiling. It was festooned with bunches of Bayberry bark, Balmony and Tormentil. Draped over the top rail was a white and pitifully tiny fleece. Next to it was pegged a little woolly tail, dangling like a catkin from a hazel twig. Hermione's eyes swam with tears. She strove not to give way to them, to remember what she had read in the Nei Jing:

_'Traditionally the fleece is spun and then plaited into bracelets, worn as amulets, with the power to balance and revitalise. The tail is the seat of positive Chi (energy).'_

"It's the tail, isn't it, that's the important bit? Can I… can I _touch_ it?" Tentatively, reverently, she reached out a hand.

"Go ahead." For Neville, gutting and skinning the creature had taken the romance from the myth along with its lights(3) and intestines. "It's not as though it's a holy relic. It's not Gryffindor's sword, or the Philosophers' Stone. It's not going to cure cancer or Dragon pox, or bring about world peace. It's a lucky charm, like a rabbit's foot… _'heertes-ease brings and Hope'_, that's all."

Sounding somewhat disillusioned, he quoted the last line of the monk's verse (the only one he could remember). He'd changed his tune since his 'annunciation' in the garden.

" 'Where there's life there's hope'?" Hermione trotted out the maxim shaded with irony. "Or there should be."

"Any idea when you'll be seeing him next?" asked Neville.

"Seeing who? Ron?" Hermione wrenched her eyes away from the fluffy tail.

"Harry! Who else? Forget about Ron – oh, look, forget I said that – but, really, Hermione, he doesn't seem to be making you very happy… Sorry, none of my business. We _are_ going to give this 'ere tail to Harry, aren't we?"

Even Neville couldn't mistake Hermione's goggling relief.

"You didn't honestly think that just because I'd got my hands on a piece of magic fur, I was suddenly going to go charging off to attack You-Know-Who? I'm no hero - never have been, never will be. Oh, it were a nice idea for all of about five minutes, but I was kidding myself… When I said I'd been Chosen, I meant chosen to bestow the Lamb tail on Harry. I'm a link in a chain, with Harry at the end. The way I see it, Hermione, we all have our part to play in this war - you only need one weak link and the chain breaks…"

To Hermione such unselfish, good-natured common-sense was nothing less than heroic.

"We'll have to try to contact Harry. Goodness knows how, with no owls - he's being such a recluse. We could try Godric's Hollow. He said he might head over there once he'd sorted things out with the Dursleys. Maybe he could arrange to meet us. You'd better keep the tail with you, just in case…"

Neville's face fell like a broken broomstick.

"But what if I lose it?"

**End of chapter. Rather a mild one, wasn't it? A lot more happens in the next one in terms of plot development and explanation.**

**Next chapter: NOT TRIUMPHANT BUT TRAGIC. Hermione explains her theory about Narcissa. So how does Snape fit into all this?**

1 Eccles cakes: individual, round, flattish cakes with a flaky pastry shell and currant filling. From Eccles, Greater Manchester.

2 Women's Institute. UK Muggle organisation, with a reputation for outstanding home baking.

3 Lights: sheep's lungs


	7. Not Triumphant but Tragic

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: This chapter takes place at Mrs Longbottom's cottage, and follows on directly from chapter 6.**

**Chapter 7 NOT TRIUMPHANT BUT TRAGIC**

Neville read the pages through for the third time, muttering the words under his breath, trying them out, tasting them on his tongue like a new magic muffin mixture, his eyes cutting from the transcription of his own verbal account to Hermione's transcription. Before him lay twin copies of the overheard conversation between Narcissa Malfoy and Healer Smethwyck - identical twins in many respects, but with differences, crucial differences. For one thing, Hermione's version made sense.

"Do you think that's plausible?" she asked modestly, not wanting to seem pushy, but quietly confident in her 'translation'. "I had to guess a bit to fill in the gaps, but it fits with the medical facts, and with what Hagrid told me."

"Oh, this is good. This is it. Gotta be. You're brilliant to have worked all this out, Hermione." Neville was generous with his praise, unrestrained in his admiration. "Obviously, I didn't really think she'd have called him 'You rhinoceros lover', but that is what it sounded like. No, it is! It was noisy - don't give me that pitying look! How was I to know what else it could be? 'Urine or saliva'! I'd never have guessed that!"

"It helps if you have _Healers' Herbal_ in front of you. You told me Narcissa said something about grinding the _Datura_ root, which made me wonder if she was going to use it in some sort of a poultice. So I looked that up. It was handy to have a starting point actually - that plant seems to be used for absolutely everything. After that it all started falling into place. You've never had a cat, have you?"

"Er, no. Why? Should I?" He was positive Narcissa hadn't mentioned anything about cats. Hurriedly he skimmed his eyes over the transcription in case he'd missed a feline clue, then looked back at the girl blankly.

"Well, when Crookshanks has been in a cat fight and gets bitten or scratched - that naughty animal fights all the time; my Mum keeps threatening to put tranquillizers in his cat-food - you can bet your life the bites get infected. Cats' teeth and claws are like little syringes of noxious bacteria, just waiting to jab all those harmful germs into your system. And, apparently, Hippogriff talons are the same only worse, because of them being magical creatures. Get slashed by a Hippogriff and, without the antidote, you're in big trouble."

"How big?"

"Infection; septicaemia if left untreated…"

Neville's mouth soured in distaste as though he had eaten a piece of the putrid flesh. He was squeamish about gory details.

"…weakened immunity," Hermione continued. "The body uses all its resources in fighting the invasive organisms, so you end up being really susceptible to any bugs that are going around. But anyhow, the point I'm making is, _Datura_ root is listed as one of the primary ingredients used in the antidote. On its own it will reduce the inflammation, but for a complete cure you need - "

"A _urine or saliva sample_ from the Hippogriff in question!" chimed-in Neville. "Hey, I'm with you now."

"_Or_ the '_barbs of a quill'_, _or_ '_fresh hair'_, _or_ '_two drops of blood'_ (or again, that might refer back to the samples)," explained Hermione. "You can also use clippings from the _talons_ - I assume that's what Narcissa meant when she talked about 'bowing and scraping' and 'talent'. When she mentions size and weight and age, she must be referring to Buckbeak - though she was being rather unfair, calling him a 'stinking Hippogriff'.

"No wonder she was distraught. She was hoping Smethwyck'd have some instant remedy, and there he was telling her to collect bodily fluids from a wild animal - and not just that, but one that's living at Hogwarts. She must have been at her wits' end."

"She still is," murmured Neville. "The way she's been fussing about those leaves and roots, I reckon she's running out of time. So, Draco got himself clobbered by Buckbeak _again_? Nice one!"

"Judging from the evidence, I think we can safely say that _somebody_ was wounded." Hermione paused for Neville to pick up the insinuation, but his thoughts had skewed away from Hippogriffs.

"She must love him an awful lot. Funny that - to think about someone actually loving Draco…"

The wistful note was back in his voice. Hermione clicked her tongue impatiently.

"Neville, didn't Harry say that Snape sent Draco running on ahead, before Buckbeak showed up? I'm certain he did. That means Snape was the one Buckbeak attacked. Think about it, Neville - it's _Snape_ who's been injured, not Draco."

Expectant brown eyes challenged him. Everything now depended on Neville's reaction. In her mind she could imagine how Ron would receive the news: 'Serves the greasy git right' he'd say. Or Harry's response: 'One less Death Eater to worry about. Pity I didn't get to finish the bastard off myself.' Or Hagrid's 'He deserves to rot in Hell'.

Neville rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

"He'll be needing the antidote then," he said.

XXX

"I thought you hated Snape?" It was a question Hermione had been wanting to ask for days, ever since Neville had summoned her to the Malfoys' garden.

"So did I. And I did - I mean, I used to, but I don't any more. Or not so much. Even now." Neville's disjointed explanation was the most he could manage, the mutant hybrid of emotion he felt for the man defying all classification. If hate meant subjecting Snape to no holds barred ridicule and vituperation then yes, he hated him. If it meant wishing for a theoretical thunderbolt to strike him down - a crisis necessitating an indefinite absence from the classroom and resulting in a total personality reassignment – then, yeah, he hated him. If it meant withholding an essential antidote so that the man died in agony from Hippogriff-induced blood poisoning, then, no, he did not.

"I hated him in Potions when he showed me up all the time and made me feel stupid and useless. And I was rubbish at it, I can see that now. _I_ wouldn't have wanted me in that class! But this year in Defence Against the Dark Arts he hasn't been half so bad, not to me anyhow. He left the rest of us to get on with it more, and picked on Harry instead. I'm not saying I ever enjoyed his lessons - not like Lupin's - but he was miles better than Umbridge. He taught us some good stuff : resisting _Imperius_ and avoiding Dementors, and all those non-verbal Jinxes - if I could remember them…"

Hermione had to agree: for the first time in six years DADA lessons had born a direct relevance to the dangers they were likely to encounter in the ongoing conflict with the Dark forces. More than once it had crossed her mind that the reason most of them had emerged unscathed from the fight 'that night' with the Death Eaters had as much to do with the defence techniques they had learned in class as with the swig of Felix Felicis.

"There was something else too, summat my gran said a while ago," went on Neville, sounding surprised, as though the act of verbalising the notion of not hating Snape had somehow made it come true. "I must've been griping on about Snape - as we do - and she said, '_That man may have fallen out of the Nasty tree and hit every branch on the way down, but he's no murderer. If that cantankerous killjoy hasn't hexed you to death by now, he never will. So what are you worrying about?_' That kind of stuck in my head. He shouts a lot, and he makes me feel about this big - " Neville held up his hand, the thumb and forefinger about a grass-blade's width apart. "But, really, if you think about it, over the years I've probably hurt him more often than the other way round, what with the spills and the melt-downs and the explosions…" He pondered for a moment and added quietly, "And there's another thing too. It's odd, but he's never said anything about my parents…"

"There's nothing odd about that. Everyone respects them, Neville. They made an enormous sacrifice." Reassurance came readily and sincerely.

"No, but if he were a Death Eater, you'd think he might have been tempted to use them to get a dig at me. He can say some pretty mean things when he wants to. Look at the way he lays into Harry about his Dad. Anyway, 'hate' is too strong a word - it's like what you said to Harry about him not being 'evil'…"

Hermione had to think back. She _had_ said that. Even on the night of Dumbledore's death, her instincts had been telling her not to judge too hastily. She'd thought Neville had been asleep. But he had been thinking too.

She'd been afraid that he would be like the others: so blinkered by their loyalty to Dumbledore that they were blind to the alternatives.

"I'm not saying he didn't do it," Neville said. "No one's disputing that, are they? But we only have Harry's word as to what really happened up there on the Tower. And I'm not saying Harry's lying either, but there might be some other explanation that we don't know about. It's not as though Draco's going to come back and talk us through it. If Snape dies, we'll never know."

"I want to hear him say it," Hermione muttered grimly. "To say that he's been working for Voldemort all along, playing Dumbledore - all of us - for fools, taking us for a ride… I want to hear it from his own lips."

"Yeah, like he's going to confess to us, a couple of students!" Put that way, the idea was ridiculous. Neville studied his friend, reading the frustrations beneath the damning words, and suddenly he understood her better than ever before.

"But that's not what you _believe_, is it?"

Hermione pushed her hair back from her face, smoothing her hands across her skull, as though by flattening the external tangle she could somehow marshal the confusion raging inside her head. She gave a heartfelt, hopeless sigh.

"I don't know _what_ to believe. I just don't know. The evidence is all there, but it doesn't fit. And no one seems to care - that's what gets me, Neville. They've all written Snape off, and nobody gives a damn about finding out the _truth_." Her eyes blazed with a passion for justice. "That night, Neville, think about it - that night, Luna and I were in the dungeons keeping tabs on Snape - he didn't know anything about it until Professor Flitwick came charging in. Doesn't that strike you as strange? If he was working hand in glove with Voldemort, wouldn't he have known? He should have been a key player in the attack."

"But wasn't it, like, Draco's initiation test - that's the impression I got - didn't he have to do it by himself?" Neville objected.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe. Draco was being bloody minded about it, I know that. He wouldn't tell Snape what his plan was. He didn't want him to take the credit. Isn't that weird? If the Death Eaters are one big happy family?"

Neville, who couldn't imagine confiding anything to Snape in case it went wrong and laid himself bare to a lifetime of repeated recrimination and belittling, had some sympathy with Draco on this one.

"And another thing," Hermione cried, "Why didn't he kill Flitwick while he had the chance, and me and Luna, and you lot on the stairs? He could have zapped any of us - who was going to stop him? – but he didn't hurt anybody…"

"Except Dumbledore."

It kept coming back to that one, ghastly, incontrovertible fact.

"Alright then, if it's all so cut and dried, how is it you're prepared to give him another go?" she demanded.

Neville fidgeted uneasily.

"I probably haven't thought it all through like you have, Hermione, but for me it comes down to two things. The first being, how could Dumbledore have been so wrong about Snape, and for so long? If he could be wrong about something as important as that, he could be wrong about everything else. All of it. How do we know? He… Dumbledore is - was - what the whole school is about. He's what made Hogwarts the place it is today. As far as I was concerned, Dumbledore _was_ Hogwarts! And, Hogwarts - well, you know what it's like - it's a huge, massive chunk of our lives. And if that's all been based on one wizard's wonky judgement, where does that leave us?"

_In the herb garden, desperately pretending nothing's happened, thought Hermione._

"What was the other thing, Neville?" she asked softly.

"Oh, something and nothing. You'll think I'm daft. In the fighting, right, I was down on the floor after I got that Hex in the stomach and, basically, I was trying to keep my head down cos there were all those curses and jinxes whizzing off in all directions… And then Snape and Malfoy came past. I thought for a minute Draco was going to take a swipe at me while he was about it, but Snape was hurrying him along."

"And…? So…?"

"And it was the look on Snape's face. You'd have thought he'd 've been right chuffed that the plan had worked and they'd got rid of Dumbledore. But he looked gutted. Not triumphant, but tragic."

Neither of them was sure what the implications of all this were, but it felt significant.

"So, what do we do now?" said Neville, after a long pause. "Stake out Hagrid's and wait for Snape to come to get the sample from Buckbeak? I can't see Narcissa doing it. Or he might send Draco…"

"He wouldn't risk coming back to Hogwarts - neither of them would. I can't see Draco wanting to go anywhere near Buckbeak. And Snape may not be well enough. There are plenty of other Death Eaters though," Hermione pointed out. "But for all we know, there might be samples already, in his office or in the hospital wing. We can't be in three places at once. Besides - " Here she fiddled in her pocket. "Ta-da! Antidote!" She held up a ring of twisted grey hair for Neville to inspect. "If the mountain won't come to the magic, the magic must go to the mountain."

"What mountain? Where?" Neville had panicky visions of a gruesome quest through Mordor to Mount Doom.(1)

"Oh, honestly! If I'd said, '_Muhammad_ must go…' would you have understood me then? No? Oh, never mind. I give up. This 'ring' is hair from Buckbeak's tail - don't ask me how I got it; I don't even want to think about it. We can take it to Snape - all we have to do is get Narcissa to tell us where he is."

They had not heard the cottage door open and close, but a dry 'Hmm' had them both starting up guiltily. Augusta Longbottom stood in the doorway, a long and lethal hat-pin in one hand, her vulture hat dangling from the other.

"Am I to understand," the old witch said severely, the hat pin wagging like a sharp, disapproving finger, "that you two conspirators are plotting to extract information from a person going by the name of Narcissa? And that, I take it, would be Madam Narcissa Malfoy?"

They gulped. It was pointless to deny it.

Neville's gran stabbed the pin back into the vulture's bottom. It let out a squawk, flapped over to the hat-stand and hung itself up. Mrs Longbottom began to unbutton her coat.

"I can think of a few choice phrases I might say to that young lady. Leave her to me."

**End of chapter.**

**Next chapter: TRUTH AND OIL**

**Tempted as I was to have a whole Mrs Longbottom versus Narcissa chapter, I thought the time was long overdue for a confrontation with Snape… Yes! He's actually going to be in the next chapter. (About time too!)**

1 ring, Mordor, Mt Doom - sorry, couldn't resist. LotR snuck up on me.


	8. Truth and Oil

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: 'The Chosen' was begun as a knee-jerk reaction to all the anti-Snape nonsense that circulated after the publication of HBP. So I make no apology for the blatant propaganda contained in the next two chapters. The case has been argued often and elsewhere, but I feel that the arguments bear repetition, and hope that the story itself is strong enough to carry them.**

**Chapter 8:TRUTH AND OIL**

"Is it always this bad?"

Neville, leaning weakly against the railings of the river embankment, didn't answer. He sucked in another long, slow, deep breath and willed the sickness to subside, cramming the nausea down and trying to contain it, like a camper battling to squash a fluffed-out sleeping bag into its tight, drawstring cover. He hadn't been too thrilled at the prospect of this encounter anyway; Apparating there had been the curdled sour cream on an already unappetising cake. The three Ds, as far as Neville was concerned, were not Destination, Determination, Deliberation, but Dizziness, Disorientation and Disgorgement…

The more he'd thought about Hermione's suggestion, the less enthusiastic he'd become. Try to find Snape? Visit him? Take him the antidote? Were they mad? Even if they did discover his whereabouts, who was to say that they wouldn't be Apparating plumb into a cell of Death Eaters? Or, if he were by some miracle alone, what would there be to stop Snape cursing them on the spot? Killing them like he'd killed Dumbledore?

Hermione, unfortunately, exasperatingly, had an answer for everything. Snape wouldn't risk exposing Voldemort's location, she argued, so the rendezvous with Narcissa would be somewhere known to them both, where Snape could wait, unobserved, for Narcissa's arrival. Malfoy Manor, Neville had mooted. But Narcissa had, in public at least, been dissociating herself from any connection with her errant son. Why would she risk jeopardising this last tenuous shred of her family's tattered reputation? But, whined Neville, Snape might send someone to the pick up point to collect the herbs for him. Unlikely, disagreed the psychological oracle, quoting Neville's own letter in which he described Bellatrix's acrimonious talk with her sister. Didn't it say that Voldemort was getting impatient because Snape couldn't do his job properly - would Snape wish to draw attention to his infirmity and further antagonise You-Know-Who? Would Snape kill them on the spot? No, Hermione had said slowly, I don't think he will.

Of all his objections, this was the one that Neville had been hoping she would shoot down in flames with absolute, categorical certainty.

"Ah, you don't _think_ he will?" Not quite categorical enough for Neville.

"No, I don't think so," she said again, sounding about as convincing as a lobster in a saucepan urging you to 'come on in the water's lovely'. "Either he'll be delighted to see a friendly face, in which case we're home and dry, or he won't. In which case… …he'll want to find out what we're up to. So, he's unlikely to kill us immediately."

"He'll do it after he's interrogated us? Champion!"

"Yes." Couldn't she have sounded a little _less_ categorical on this one?

"But," she added, "we do have our trump card - Buckbeak's hair. He won't be expecting that. We can use it to negotiate our safety."

"Before or after he's _Stupefied_ us, tortured us and taken it by force?"

Characterising Snape as ruthless, uncompromising and unfriendly seemed to Neville far more realistic than expecting the man to welcome them in for an ethical debate on his motives for murdering the elderly headmaster.

"And you were giving me a hard time about talking to Narcissa! She's a Pygmy Puff compared to Snape!"

"You don't have to come if you don't want," Hermione had huffed, undaunted, determined, a girl with a mission. "I'll go on my own." The clinching argument. Another trump card.

Behind them, dark and silent, the river lay like a dead, black snake, oozing into the night. The light from a lone streetlamp reflected back dully from its murky sheen, picking out, here and there, the outline shapes of waterlogged litter, drifting flecks of foam caking together in scurfy eddies, a punctured football, and the bobbing, drowning neck of a half-submerged bottle, its message of distress long lost and ignored, floating but motionless in the immeasurable flow.

Still wobbly, a puffing Neville clambered after Hermione into the cobbled street and followed her across the road. She was walking purposefully and seemed to know where she was heading. Neville, not for the first time, rued the success of his gran's adventure.

"I think it's about time I had a chat with my grandson's new boss," Mrs Longbottom had remarked grimly, on hearing a heavily censored version of their story. Believing herself to be assisting the Order in a plan to track down Draco, she had set off for Malfoy Manor armed with nothing more than a bottle of homemade Parsnip and Poppy-seed wine and generations of gritty, grandmotherly guile… Narcissa had been no match for either.

At the end of a narrow alleyway Hermione stopped and pointed.

"This is it - Spinner's End." The whisper swirled away into the dank evening mist. The street was deserted, the houses dark and derelict. No light shone from any of the windows; the whole row was abandoned, empty, uninhabited. Neville felt slightly better… …and then infinitely worse as Hermione said,

"It's that one at the end. We might as well knock and see, now that we're here. Come on…"

By the time she realised that Neville was no longer behind her, she had already tapped on the door…

xxx

"You're late," a voice snarled within.

The door opened a fraction. In an instant Snape's black eyes had taken in Hermione's presence and shot over her shoulder, up and down the street, scanning the darkness. Their startled, ferocious glint reminded her alarmingly of Buckbeak. It was all she could do not to wrench the 'ring' out of her pocket and wave it in his face shouting, 'Don't kill me – I've got the antidote'. Before she could speak, his cold hand closed on her wrist and yanked her inside with a suddenness and force that took her breath away. His _Expelliarmus!_ slid her wand out of her grip. The next thing she knew she was pinned up against the wall, Snape's hand over her mouth and his wand pointing directly at her chest.

"What are you doing here?" he hissed. "Are you alone? Where are the others? How many of you are there?"

She shook her head, unable to speak behind the clamping hand.

"Who's out there?" he insisted harshly. The wand jabbed into her sternum. "Even you, Granger, wouldn't be so rash…"

What had she expected - an outlaw? An invalid? A convict like Sirius, on the run, slightly crazed, ragged and unkempt? In the dim candle light it was difficult to tell, but he didn't seem vastly different from the Snape of old. If he was injured he was hiding it well. His clothes looked as though they might have been slept in, and he did look very tired, she could see that, his face even more gaunt and sallow than usual. She sensed a tremor in the restraining arm - either that or it was her own trembling, transmitting itself through him.

"You will keep your voice down," he instructed, loosening his grip, his own voice a low, hoarse whisper. "Now, answer me!"

Should she claim to have the back up of the entire Order waiting around the corner? Or that she was a sole agent, gung-ho with Gryffindor arrogance, on a single-handed, maverick mission? Even without Legilimens he'd know she was lying.

"Two of us," she gulped.

"Two?" The dark eyes widened in incredulity. A derisive laugh caught in his throat and he twisted away so as not to cough in her face.

"Potter?" His thoughts jumped immediately to Harry. "You've got Potter out there and he's sent you ahead to see how the land lies!" _And to think he called me a coward! _His nostrils flared in anger - the skin around them was red and cracked, as though the ugly, hooked nose had been blown once too often.

"No!" squeaked Hermione.

"Not _Weasley_?" He sounded weary at the thought.

"It's not Harry or Ron. It's Neville. Just me and Neville."

"Longbottom? Well, fetch him. I can't have that numbskull loitering about outside. He'll break something. Get him in here before he's seen."

_By Muggles, Aurors or Death Eaters - which posed the greatest threat?_

Hermione scooted to the alley, not knowing whether she would find Neville. But there he was, greenly apologetic.

"He says you're to come inside," Hermione panted, feeling strangely buoyant, like a vessel released from its docking clamps and set adrift, amazed that Snape had let her go. Now would have been an ideal time to make their escape. However, his negative reception had, if anything, strengthened her missionary zeal.

"Is he alright?" Peering at her, Neville saw, as yet, no marks of visible torture.

"A bit rough - no, not _violent_," she forestalled Neville's whimpering 'Nnnnn-no', "…_rough_, as in tired, run down, off colour. I think he might have a cold. But he hasn't Crucio-ed me yet…"

XXX

Now there were two of them wandless, backed up against the sitting room wall.

"If you wish to avoid a _Langlack_ or worse, _you will be silent_." Snape directed his malice at Neville, prodding his wand threateningly at the boy's throat and applying pressure to the working Adam's apple. Neville gagged on fear. Then, as the lingering queasiness of Apparating was churned afresh by the terror of confronting Snape - a Snape who was quite patently _not_ delighted to see them – an expression of sheer horror came over Neville's face and he cupped his hand over his mouth.

"He's going to be sick!" cried Hermione.

A hidden door in the far wall flew open.

"Through there, boy!" Snape shoved him across the room and out. "An admirable choice of bodyguard," he commented, the scratchiness of his voice taking the edge off the sarcasm. He shut the door to block out the sound of retching.

"It's the Apparating. He's only just passed his test. He's -"

"What do you want?" Snape interrupted. Hermione searched his face for the scantest trace of warmth, but found only suspicion and hostility. "How did you find me?" He glanced at his watch in agitation. "You must leave at once. You foolish girl, what do you hope to achieve by coming here? Take your puking playmate and go - before I change my mind."

The menace of the threat was diluted as he turned aside to blow his nose. It was impossible to be intimidated by a man with a streaming cold. Hermione felt her courage returning.

"I want to speak to you," she stated.

"But I have no desire to speak with you. Get Longbottom and go – **now**!" he said thickly, the m's and n's clogging. "If you're caught here…"

"Who by? By the Aurors? I think that would be _your_ problem, not ours. I hardly think we'd be arrested as traitors. Or did you mean by the Death Eaters? Yes, that would be awkward - you'd be forced to kill us, wouldn't you? And you wouldn't want to do that, would you - Sir?"

_Let me be right; let me be right. If he wanted to kill us, we'd be dead already - wouldn't we? Let this be an act. Please…_

"If this is an adolescent death wish, I can grant it." He raised his wand and levelled it at her. "Don't push your luck, Granger."

Had she miscalculated? No, she had to push, and push relentlessly if she was going to reach this outcast in exile. She faced him with resolution.

"You want us to leave? Why? Before someone sees us and accuses you of conspiring with the enemy? Of keeping in contact with the Order? Would you do it - would you kill _again_ to maintain your cover? I bet it'll be easier the second time…"

"Get out! Before it's too late!" If he'd had any voice left he would have shouted.

Hermione saw the door behind Snape ease open, the bookshelves swinging back, and Neville's face peeping out, taking in the situation and, appalled, ducking away out of sight, waiting for a more opportune moment to make his re-entrance.

"But that's why you did it - didn't you? Didn't you? Say it! That's why I'm here. I want to hear you say it! You killed him to save yourself. But why? The _real_ reason - I have to know the truth!" In goading him she was stirring the stockpot of her own emotions - she'd intended to question him in a sensible sequence, and here she was bubbling over, already riled and ranting.

"I cursed Dumbledore." The answer came as flat, harsh and cold as pack ice. "That, I would have thought, is common knowledge. Did you expect me to deny it? The old fool was asking for it. There, is that what you wanted to hear? Are you satisfied? What, Miss Know-it-all, would you like me to say? Perhaps I can oblige." He was mocking her now, cruel and contemptuous.

"You could try saying you're sorry!" flamed Hermione. She was finally entertaining the possibility that her personality profiling of Snape might be flawed. She scrutinised him, in vain, for any sign of remorse.

"_Sorry_? How very quaint! And do you believe, Miss Granger, that an expression of regret on my part would in any way alleviate the grief and loss you so blatantly display? What difference could it make? How could my supposed 'repentance' be of any help to you?"

"It might help you," she whispered.

Hermione thought for a moment she'd hit home, that his expression faltered, but it was just his facial muscles stilling and contorting before a sudden sneeze. He fumbled for a damp, overused handkerchief before the next sneezes shook and overtook him.

"You didn't have to do it." Hermione was determinedly impassive, muting the first faint twang of sympathy before its gentle reverberations could reach her heart. If he was sick why didn't he brew himself a Potion - wasn't that his job? If he preferred to pretend he was fine, she'd go along with that. She'd come for answers and she wasn't about to let herself be side-tracked. "Dumbledore was dying anyway. Did you know that? Or didn't you care? He'd drunk poison - you killed a dying man! Are you proud of yourself? Not such a coup, is it, to curse an old, dying wizard who can't defend himself?"

Harry had never expressly said that the liquid Dumbledore had drunk was poisonous - but given the evidence, how could it have been anything else? And how would anyone ever prove or disprove it? The cause of death was universally accepted as _Avada Kadavra_; there had been no post mortem. If Snape was shocked by her revelation he did not show it. He sighed heavily, mopping his nose.

"Poisoned or not, Dumbledore was weak - weak and feeble. He'd been ailing for months; his powers were in decline. It was more of a culling than a killing," he sneered. "I did him a service."

_Beyond the call of duty._

"Did Draco a service, more like! I thought you didn't approve of helping other people with their 'homework'?"

"You are meddling in matters you do not understand. I could not allow Draco to fail."

"That stupid Vow!" exclaimed Hermione. "Whatever possessed you?" Behind the handkerchief, Snape's eyes flared in surprise. "Oh yes, we know all about your Unbreakable Vow. You should have known better than to think that would stay a secret for long. And Dumbledore knew about it too, didn't he? Don't bother to deny it. Hagrid heard you arguing in the garden."

That was a shapeless truth, cut to size, tailored to fit and delicately embroidered, but Snape was not to know. _What, exactly, had Hagrid heard?_

"Giant ears flapping, eh?" When in doubt, undermine the opposition. "One of these days the great oaf'll take off, like that accursed Hippogriff."

_More like Dumbo_, thought Hermione, honing the comparison for her own benefit, realising that Snape couldn't be expected to be conversant with Disney elephants. Not surprisingly, he didn't sound too fond of Buckbeak.

"Is that all you can say? Anyone would think you _wanted_ us to mistrust you." She didn't understand his attitude. He was defensive but not as vehemently as Hermione had expected. When he next spoke, the statement had all the smooth sincerity of a Ministry manifesto.

"I honoured my Vow. I was carrying out the wishes of the Dark Lord."

"Don't give me that!" cried Hermione fiercely. She felt like slapping him. "I know what this is - I know what you're doing - '_plausible deniability'_, isn't that what they call it? If we get interrogated by the Death Eaters, you won't have said anything incriminating. Well, good for you, Sir, you haven't given anything away. You've covered yourself again and I'm merely a hysterical schoolgirl with _bereavement issues_! Do you think we made all this effort to find you, just to be fobbed off…"

She saw herself as an ambassador, as his lifeline to the outside world, but he refused to acknowledge her or reach out to her. Couldn't he see that he was missing an opportunity here? How could she help him if he didn't want to be helped?

"Be quiet!" Snape barked. He was checking the time again. "You dare to question my loyalty? I am not in the habit of harming children, but for you I could make an exception. Longbottom! Stop skulking in the hall. Get out - both of you. You should leave - now - while you still can."

Neville sidled back into the room.

"She's not coming," he announced bluntly, poised to leap out of range should this information provoke an outburst of rage from Snape. "You keep looking at your watch as if you're expecting somebody. Well, she's not coming."

"What are you talking about, you stupid boy?" Snape fired him the kind of withering glare that would stunt a Russian Vine(1).

"Madam Malfoy. She's not coming. She's, er, under new orders…" said Neville, trying to imply that this was all part of a master plan. Under the influence, more like, of Parsnip and Poppy-seed wine. His gran always swore it worked better than _Veritaserum_ and you got a good, long sleep afterwards. In the morning Narcissa wouldn't remember a thing.

Instead of fuelling him to violence, the news that Narcissa was a no-show acted on Snape like a _Sapping_ spell. Lowering himself into the old armchair as though his legs no longer had the strength to support him, he dropped his pounding head into his hands with a barely stifled groan. The two students exchanged uncertain glances. Hermione could almost feel the blocked sinuses throbbing. She'd anticipated that Snape would be in pain from the Hippogriff wound, but she could not have predicted him looking quite so seedy. With a jolt she realised just how much he had been counting on Narcissa bringing him the next dose of _Datura_. Even Snape could only maintain the unbreakable act for so long. He'd concealed his discomfort so far, bolstered by the prospect of an imminent, pain-killing herbal fix to get him through another day, but now even that slender hope was taken from him. In the space of a sentence he had aged: he looked thinner, older, more tired than ever. She wondered if he had the energy to keep going. Grey and hunched, all angles and wary pride, he reminded Hermione of a solitary, wounded heron.

She and Neville perched themselves opposite him on the threadbare sofa. In the chilly, unheated room the dingy upholstery felt damp and uncomfortable.

"Not the healthiest place to live," Hermione observed, addressing the air above the bowed head. "Couldn't you at least light a fire?"

Snape raised red-rimmed, watering eyes and glowered.

"And _advertise _my presence to any passing Auror? Use your intelligence, girl."

Hermione bit back the retort. Intelligence? At least he finally credited her with having some. If he preferred to freeze that was his business – this was no worse than the dungeons; if he couldn't be bothered to look after himself, why should she care? Did he value his life so little?

"But the Aurors could help you," she protested. "Some of them are members of the -"

"Shut up!" he croaked, and then, oddly, "There are rats."

Rats?

"I'm not surprised. This place is a dump." _The whole road's probably swarming with the filthy things. It's a wonder it's not been condemned as a health hazard and demolished. _

The hot, heavy eyes bored into hers and, as from nowhere, a thought materialised - an intuition, an awareness - fully formed in her mind. _Rats? Wormtail? Snape was under surveillance, and not only by Aurors. His wand too, was regularly checked for spell usage. _She didn't know how, but she knew it, and the knowledge filled her with indignation. Voldemort still didn't trust him. Was he right not to? Was this the crowning irony? What more could Snape do to convince him of his loyalty? Wasn't killing Dumbledore enough? Would _anything_ ever be enough?

"Rats?" She looked to him for confirmation. "Here? _Now_?"

"'They' come and go. 'They' have an irritating habit of following me around."

"Right. We'll see about that." Without waiting for permission, she summoned her wand; Snape made no attempt to block her. In fact he appeared to have opted out of the proceedings altogether and sat groggily watching her, breathing glue, intermittently dabbing at his nose.

"_Muffliato!_"Directing the spell at each of the four walls in turn, taking no chances, Hermione sound-proofed the room. Then, for good measure, she shot the spell at the ceiling and aimed a few extras at the skirting boards. While she was in '_Muffliato!_' mode she nipped through the hidden doors and dealt with the stairs, hall, kitchen and bathroom.

"Let's see the _rat_ get through that lot! Now, perhaps, we can talk," she said smugly, settling herself back down next to Neville. "The Aurors - "

"…will arrest me on sight. I'll be in Azkaban before you can say 'human rights'. The wizard world does not share your high-minded Muggle principles."

Hermione's mouth was shaping itself to protest, even though she was inclined to agree. Snape continued, squeezing a sour appraisal from the facts. Two weeks' ripening had not sweetened this bitter fruit.

"Scrimgeour is cheerfully condemning innocent scapegoats to boost his arrest quotas - what hope is there for a wizard whose guilt is uncontested? Amnesty? I think not. You wish to see me brought to justice, Miss Granger - your egalitarian zeal does you credit, but it is - as always – misplaced." He sighed. "What defence could I mount? Potter, Malfoy, Fenrir, Amycus and the others - they are all witnesses. I killed Albus." _I killed Albus._

"But the Vow - that's as bad as being held at wand-point. You could plead coercion. Surely that would count…" argued Hermione, still militant, but vacillating now between defence and prosecution.

_The Vow. Indeed. A prophylactic turned fatally toxic. How many times had he inwardly cursed Bellatrix's resentful distrust. Nothing less than the Unbreakable Vow would have convinced her; nothing less than total obedience would have satisfied Dumbledore._

"The Vow itself does not constitute a defence - a mitigation, perhaps; hardly grounds for an acquittal. It was freely taken. A calculated risk. If you take a risk you have to be prepared to live with the consequences - or die for them. Individuals are expendable, some more than others. In that situation I had to salvage what I could. I had little choice. Albus was aware of that."

_Dumbledore had known all along_. In Hermione's mind, Snape had finally exonerated himself. She had been bluffing before when she had mentioned Hagrid; she had needed to hear it from Snape himself. The events on the tower, as described by Harry, replayed themselves in her head and, with her inferences confirmed, it was as though an explanatory soundtrack had been spliced to a formerly silent film. "'He was asking for it'," she murmured, quoting the phrase she had earlier dismissed as a slur.

"Euthanasia is no defence either." Snape hung his head, staring blearily at the floor. The lank, black hair swung forward, concealing his face. _No choice? That was not strictly true. There had been a choice – and he had chosen to live, though it was becoming increasingly unclear why. Choices? One ill-considered choice, so many years ago, and he'd been bedevilled by the consequences for the rest of his life._

"So, what now?" A jury would not let him off the hook; neither did Hermione. Understanding a criminal's motives is no guarantee of forgiveness. Dumbledore's death was still too recent, too raw, too shocking for that. "What are you going to do? Just give up, is that it? Work for Voldemort? How could you?"

His resignation to the inevitable verdict stung her like a betrayal of her most cherished belief – the rights of the underdog. She was disappointed in him, unwilling to reconcile the indomitable Snape of her experience with this pale acquiescence. A rusty sofa spring twanged beneath her as she leaned forwards. She felt Neville's hand plucking at her arm.

"Steady on, Hermione." But it would take more than ineffectual, friendly remonstrance to stop her now. Her interrogation fixed on Snape.

"Whose side are you on? Do you even know yourself? What do you think you're doing? Poisoning defenceless owls! What a cheap shot! That _was_ you, wasn't it? Blowing up bridges isn't quite your style. Goodness knows how you did it. What harm have they ever done you?"

"The Dark Lord finds the disruption entertaining." Snape didn't have the energy to argue. _Not now, Granger._ _Not the moral outrage._ _Just go, can't you? I can't… cope with this right now._

"And killing wand trees? Talk about pointless exercises!"

"Likewise, a diversion." He breathed out heavily through his mouth. "Have any owls _died_, Miss Granger? To your impeccable knowledge? Have your precious trees lost anything other than _foliage_?" _Would you rather I helped him plan an assault on Azkaban?_

"Contaminating reservoirs then," she accused. "I bet you had a hand in that too. Hundreds of Muggles were taken to hospital, you know. You could have killed them. Is that what Voldemort intended?"

"The Dark Lord doesn't employ me to make medicines!"

"I can see that. Look at you! You wouldn't be much of an advert. What was it then, another_ amusement_?"

"I persuaded the Dark Lord that a 'dry run' of the reservoir experiment was required – a wise precaution as it so happened. It seems the concentration of toxins was too dilute to result in fatalities. The Dark Lord was disappointed." Snape massaged his left arm, where the memory of Voldemort's displeasure still burned. "I have as yet been unable to repeat the test. The ultimate target, it may interest you to hear, is to be the water supply to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts…" _I can't stall him forever…_

Hermione's face crumpled in disgust.

"That's horrible. You're despicable. Any self-respecting human being would refuse to co-operate. To think that I came here because I had this airy-fairy idea about you deserving a fair trial! More fool me! You've got what you deserve. Come on, Neville, let's get out of here." She rose, dragging a wordless Neville to his feet.

_That's right, walk away. Turn your back on me like everyone else. _

Husky, low and lifeless, Snape's rasping rejoinder followed them to the door.

"Don't let me tarnish that shiny idealism of yours with anything so sordid as the truth. Truth and oil may rise to the surface, but neither is clear or clean. You want to know the truth? The truth, Miss Granger, is brutal and unpleasant. Am I working for the Dark Lord? Yes. I have no choice. Am I supplying him with dangerous Potions? Yes. Again, if I wish to live, I have no choice. Will there be casualties? Assuredly. It is an occupational hazard. I produce poisons not perfumes. Reality is unpalatable; a spy's life is no picnic. But don't worry, it will not be for much longer. There is, in the end, only one choice…"

He sank back in the armchair, his eyes closed, and for the first time Hermione and Neville could clearly see the pain and exhaustion etched on his features. The stress of the past weeks had taken its toll on his resistance and his morale.

If ever there was a candidate for healing Borometz broth, Snape was it. Why, Hermione berated herself, hadn't she thought to ask Neville to bring some, or Pepper-Up which the man clearly needed, or even Mrs Longbottom's pot of magical goo? She'd known - OK, hypothesised - that Snape would be in a bad way. And she'd viewed that as an advantage! Sick, Snape had represented less of a threat - she realised that now, though she hadn't openly rationalised it or admitted it to herself before. Bringing him the antidote had as much to do with intellectual curiosity as philanthropy. Initially she'd even seen it as a bargaining tool. Could she have been that calculating? True, she'd wanted to give him a chance to state his side of the case, but what had moved her to embark on this quest - genuine compassion or a more academic ambition: the search for the truth? Truth and justice – lofty, abstract ideals! All this time she'd been counting Snape's innocence, guilt or anything in between as factors in an ethical equation, a logical puzzle. She had hardly stopped to consider the human angle.

Neville regarded the hated Professor, laid so low by a simple virus, looking worse by the minute, fogbound with the cold and succumbing before their eyes to the ravages of the Hippogriff in his system.

"We can't go, Hermione. We've got to give him the stuff. He's poorly. He needs it now - all of it."

"What! Make him better so he can turn round and poison us?"

But Hermione knew Neville was right. They retraced their steps.

"Sir? Sir, we brought you the _Datura_ plant."

Snape's eyes dragged open; disbelief turned to relief.

"And, Sir, I've got the antidote from Buckbeak."

Inexpressible relief.

**End of chapter.**

**Next Chapter: A CHOICE. It's the last chapter : steel yourselves for some gory bits, some angsty bits and a bittersweet ending!**

1 Russian Vine : Polygonum or Mile-a-Minute vine, renowned for its rampant growth.


	9. A Choice

**New Perspective 1**

**THE CHOSEN**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: This is the final chapter – it was never intended to be a long story. If I say that its alternative title is 'Neville and the Borometz' perhaps that'll explain why I stop where I do.**

**Warm thanks to all my readers and reviewers.**

**If you thought I'd let Snape get off a little lightly in the last chapter... read on!**

**X X X**

**Chapter 9: A CHOICE**

"_**For he who lives more lives than one,**_

_**More deaths than one must die."**_

_**Wilde (The Ballad of Reading Gaol)**_

****

"What are you waiting for? You've done your good deed for the day. What more do you want – House points? You've satisfied your curiosity - had a good gawp at the recidivist. Not a titillating experience, was it? Though, I dare say you can spice it up later when you regale Potter with your audacity. Get out, the pair of you. You've run your little errand of mercy – now go away and leave me alone."

_How ungrateful can you get? Snappy, tetchy, miserable bastard! Impossible, obstinate man! Not a word of thanks. No acknowledgement. After everything they'd done he was still pushing them away._ Rebuffed and offended, Hermione snatched open the door. She'd been willing to help, but she'd expected some kind of recognition. Neville, however,remained standing next to Snape. He understood male pride.

"Will you be able to manage, Sir? With the poultice an' all?" he said, being practical. "We don't rightly know where you're injured, Sir, but strikes me it could be tricky…" He tailed off into embarrassment, feeling that the mere offer of assistance was impertinent, bordering on improper and certainly unwelcome.

The two ex-pupils braced themselves for another rejection. They saw the master's jaw clench and tense. But his fingers were working on the grey curls of Hippogriff hair, unrolling, unwinding, straightening and smoothing, until at last he could run his hands along the length of the strands, with no knots, no kinks, no tangles. He held his life in his hands. Pulled first in one direction and then drawn back the other way, the silvery hairs slipped through his slowly stroking fingers, unhurried, repetitive, hypnotic… His eyes followed the motion, glazed and unfocussed.

Neville was nervously clearing his throat to repeat the question when Snape spoke. Not only had he heard the boy's offer but considered and evaluated it, and reached a decision - albeit reluctantly. There were times when necessity overruled independence. The accompanying sneer, however, was not encouraging.

"Congratulations, Longbottom. You have just volunteered yourself. I suspect you and I shall find the task equally disagreeable."

x x x

Potions masters prepare Potions; students watch and learn. Neither Hermione nor Neville would have dreamed of contesting the hierarchy. Yet, when for the third time in as many minutes, Snape laid aside his tools in order to deal with his dripping nose, Hermione stepped in.

"You sit down, Sir. You're not well. I'll do it. I know how."

"You have done your homework! Don't expect any extra marks for it," he sniffed. Ungracious as ever. But he ceded his place to the girl.

A selection of containers had been set out on the kitchen counter. Hermione recognised the ingredients: skullcap, vervain, larks' tongues, honeydew, prickly ash, sarsaparilla… A dark, stoppered glass bottle of pre-prepared tincture base stood awaiting the addition of _Datura_ sap. Recalling both the recipes and methods from her time in the library, Hermione stripped the fresh leaves, chopped, measured, mixed, stirred, boiled the spring water and finally left the infusion to steep. Next, using a Barrier Charm to protect her skin, she turned her attention to shredding and grinding the Datura root. It was like an elongated, stringy parsnip, off-white and extremely fibrous; as she cut, it gave off the sour, sickly smell of rotten asparagus. When combined with the other poultice ingredients an exothermic reaction took place - the bowl and its contents glowed briefly, becoming warm and then hot.

Snape who, from his chair, had been monitoring her every movement with critical suspicion, observed the milky steam rising from the bowl.

"That'll do. Close the door behind you," he ordered. A curt dismissal.

"But, Sir! Don't you want me to - "

"The door, Miss Granger." It was non-negotiable.

Incensed, Hermione was sorely tempted to tip the searing mixture over his miserable, greasy head and slam the door, but she did neither. Tears of vexation burning in her eyes, she left the room in furious silence, too humiliated to protest. She stood, banished in the hallway, arms fiercely crossed, determined at the very least to eavesdrop on whatever it was that was so secret.

Silence… then a series of muted gasps that had her squirming until it dawned on her that it was Snape, painfully and with Neville's clumsy assistance, getting undressed.

_Oh, really - how ridiculous. A Disrobing Charm would do that in seconds without any fuss._ Neville, she assumed, could not perform the spell; Snape, with his wand subject to spot-checks, would not want to. He was still too scrupulously proper to strip off in front of a female student! A smile cracked through her annoyance.

Then a shriek, and Snape's impatient growl.

"Pull yourself together, boy!"

Neville was not destined for a career in nursing - a plant nursery was the closest he'd ever get.

Murmured instructions, the scrape of a chair being moved, demur, debate, denial…

"Just make the incision!" Snape's voice, sharp and strained. A grunt, an exclamation, a moaning whimper - what on earth was going on? – a clatter and a scuffle and the door was wrenched open as Neville made a second precipitate plunge for the bathroom.

Snape was sitting astride the chair, his uncovered back to the room. It was only too obvious what had prompted Neville's urgent exit. Hermione had been priming herself for a gaping wound, a hideous, infected, even gangrenous gash, but there was nothing so dramatic. Just a raised, red lump below the left shoulder, a huge, angry boil, throbbing like a Clabbert pustule and weeping a trickle of yellow fluid. The skin around the bump – an area the size of a soup bowl – was hotly inflamed, contrasting starkly with the pallor of the surrounding flesh, and stretched taut, bursting with pent pressure. It looked as though it might explode, as though there was an incubating baby dragon under the fiery skin, pulsing and ready to hatch.

"Oh my god!" Hermione rushed forwards. "It's an abscess, isn't it, Sir?"

He nodded. His hands were gripping the chair back tightly, his face ashen. It was too late for modesty.

"Damn Hippogriff. Bloody brute nicked me with his claw. I trust you have a stronger stomach than that squeamish squib," he hissed.

"Probably not, but I'll do my best." Dismay masqueraded as calm competence. Could she sustain it, or would she too end up making an unscheduled bolt for the bathroom? She didn't know any spells for this sort of thing; she'd have to do it the Muggle way. Just a puncture wound; it could have been much worse. But this was more than an infected bite at the base of Crookshanks' tail. Maybe it was just as well Narcissa had not been the one to get the Hippogriff hair. Steeping a few Datura leaves was one thing, but would she have been prepared to apply a poultice? Hermione didn't see the elegant Madam Malfoy as the Mungo Bonham(1) type. What would Snape have done?

Hermione was already washing her hands, scrubbing-up in this makeshift operating theatre. "You want me to… to lance it?" With a cloth held at the ready - this thing was going to erupt like Krakatoa – she poised the knife… and stopped.

"Well? What are you waiting for?"

"I… er… my hands are cold. I… I don't want to hurt you…" Hurt him? She'd have to _touch_ him first, and she hadn't got her head round that part yet.

"You're the only one who doesn't! Get on with it!"

"Yes, yes… OK, keep still… I'll try not to…"

"Just do it!" The instruction was muffled as he clenched the chair back, burying his head against his right arm, holding his breath.

One clean incision and the wound was spurting, venting a glutinous, oily lava stream of pus, a putrid rancid mayonnaise that pumped from the cavernous crater, oozing in repulsive, pungent gobs down his smooth, white back.

"Neville!" she called. "Neville, get in here." The boy appeared in the doorway looking fragile. "Neville, talk to us. I don't want him passing-out - or me, for than matter! I need him to talk me through the next bit."

Averting his eyes from the gore, Neville shuffled past and squatted beside Snape.

"So, er, Sir… the, um, _owl_ thing. How did you do that then, Sir? Owls all over the, er, country… Did you, like, Apparate everywhere with poison, or, um, what?" In the presence of his old enemy the garrulous gardener was tongue-tied.

"Wind dispersal… food chain…" Snape mumbled, forcibly focussing his mind onto something other than the pain. He shifted himself slightly more upright in the chair so that he could eyeball Longbottom directly. Hermione, conquering her revulsion, swabbed and listened.

"The food chain, boy. The great beasts at the top – lions, Manticores – through to the birds and smaller mammals, invertebrates and, lamentably, you at the bottom." A halt for breathing and nose-blowing. Hermione was amused to hear the answer becoming a lesson - after so many years the instinct to instruct was ingrained. "An application of a systemic, uniquely bubotoxic(2) pesticide spread by the wind… slugs eat plants, small rodents eat slugs, and… come on, Longbottom, engage a modicum of logic. What do owls eat?"

"Owl treats? Oh, I see, Sir - mice and voles. Wow. But what about Kestrels? They eat mice…" Neville had grasped the essentials if not the entire strategy.

"Since when have Kestrels been owls, Longbot- aaah!"

A hissing intake of breath, and then Hermione felt Snape's locked muscles slacken suspiciously beneath her hands. His head slumped forwards onto his arm.

"Neville! He's going to faint. Splash some water in his face. Quick! I can't do it – I'm covered in gunk. Or slap his cheeks. What? I don't know. Just do something!"

Hermione had had to squeeze the wound. It was the only way to get rid of the pus. Squeeze till it bled. Neville jumped into action, dousing him with cold water; Snape spluttered and stirred.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! This is really bad, Sir. I don't know if I can… You need a Healer for this." The abscess had eaten away deeply into the flesh; Hermione was sure she could see the white bone of his shoulder blade at the bottom of the pit.

"Use the tincture," he whispered hoarsely. His smarting eyes flickered and rolled.

"Neville! Give him something else to think about. Distract him. Tell him… Tell him about the Borometz!"

"A Borometz?"

"Yes, well, you see, Sir… I just happened to be doing a spot of gardening, when…" Neville began his tale. Hermione dabbed the tincture in and around the blood-welling cavity, feeling Snape twitch and flinch as the antiseptic mixture stung.

Hermione moved over to the counter and picked up the bowl; it was still hot.

"Pack it," Snape gasped, his attention sliding from Neville. "Pack it with the poultice, and seal it. Use _Suturo!_ (3) The herbs will be absorbed…"

Hermione took a deep breath. This was revolting; it was like stuffing a chicken. As gently as she could, she pressed the paste into the wound. His skin felt alternately hot and cold, burning and clammy by turns, a thermal lighthouse, signalling danger. Snape moaned, and swayed on the chair.

"Look, Sir!" Neville cried. "Look, I've got the tail somewhere ... here, in my pocket. You can hold it, Sir, feel it, a Borometz tail…" He pushed the furry scrap into the Professor's hand, curling the long, cold fingers over its softness, and held it there, Snape's hand clasped between his own.

Perhaps it was the legendary magic of the lamb that eased the pain and brought the first, faint living colour back to the grey cheeks; perhaps it was the warmth of human contact, after being so alone for so long.

XXX

"Drink this while it's hot." Hermione handed Snape the newly strained infusion and stood over him, sternly Pomfrey-esque. "Bless you," she murmured as he sneezed yet again. "Pity you didn't think to bring something for that cold while you were about it."

Scowling at the Muggle benediction, Snape sipped and gave a baleful sniff.

"It'll be the Hippogriff wound, messing up your resistance I expect," said Hermione. "You'll feel better once the antidote kicks in." He was in for a rough night and they both knew it. "But you've really got to look after yourself – keep warm and eat properly and… and drink fluids and so on." She tried to remember the sort of things her Mum said to her when she was ill. Standard, textbook stuff. It sounded lame and stilted and trite, even to herself, but what comfort or advice could she offer the Professor? He'd ignore it anyway, whatever she said. He already knew what he _ought_ to be doing.

Neville had helped a sore and shaky Snape back into the sitting room while Hermione tidied up the kitchen. Now she pulled up the cloak that was slipping off his thin shoulders – all the while asking herself why she was caring for a man who would, in all likelihood, be poisoning her drinking water at the earliest opportunity.

"Why don't you come back with us," she suggested gently, "at least until you're better. You could claim sanctuary with the Order - "

"The Order! I haven't exactly seen them beating a path to my door with messages of support. I don't see them joining the thronging queue of well-wishers…"

No, they had been conspicuous by their absence. The Weasleys – too preoccupied with Bill's convalescence and the wedding; Remus and Tonks – ecstatically wrapped up in each other; Shacklebolt - chained to his Ministerial desk; Mundungus - released from Azkaban and maintaining a low profile for his own nefarious reasons; Hagrid - vindictively unforgiving; Moody - Dark Detectors working overtime, out for vengeance; McGonagall - overburdened with the responsibilities of her new Headship… Which of them had given a thought to supporting their former colleague?

"Half of them wouldn't think twice about turning me in to Scrimgeour. They've never trusted me. Why should I trust them? They're a bunch of judgemental fools too short-sighted to see beyond their immediate misconceptions. Sixteen years! And still they question my loyalty to my master."

_It's not the loyalty that's in question, it's the master._

"So what will you do?" Hermione asked.

"Do? Rejoin the Dark Lord. What else can I do? I should go now. My absence will be noted." The bitterness was undisguised. "My master's work is not yet accomplished. And_ he_ will not achieve his task unaided." He took another mouthful of the healing infusion, grimacing as the scalding liquid scoured his raw throat.

Neville tasted his own mug of plain hot water without enthusiasm. There wasn't a morsel of food in the house, not even tea - Snape hadn't been joking when he'd told them he didn't want the place to appear inhabited. Neville was puzzling over what the Professor had just said. The pronouns had left him confused.

"Let me get this straight. You are talking about _Dumbledore_ here, aren't you, Sir, and _Harry_?" He hesitated over the names. If he were wrong this could be an unfortunate question.

"You already know the answer to that, Longbottom. You wouldn't be here if you didn't." Sharp words, but the tone was spent and tired. "I'll spell it out for you if I must: I served Dumbledore while he was alive. His death has altered nothing. Is that clear enough for you, boy?"

So that's what it took to get a straight answer out of Snape – despair.

"And what about Harry?"

"Potter? That arrogant brat'll need all the help he can get." A bolt of animosity scorched across Snape's face. He'd promised to assist the boy, not _like_ him.

"So, if it wasn't for Harry… …you'd be free to leave? To stop spying?" Hermione read the implication like a death warrant. The extent of his self-sacrifice shocked and chilled her.

Shivering, Snape drew the cloak around himself more closely.

"To die for one's beliefs - what greater test of loyalty can there be?"

"You don't mean…?" Hermione was horrified.

"No. Nothing so noble. Not yet… Not while I still have a role to play."

_But, truly, is this any kind of a life…?_ _A life of dissimulation and subservience;_ c_riminalised, condemned, despised, ostracised, abandoned…_

Hermione crouched down next to his armchair.

"You can trust us. We'll talk to people, Sir. We'll make them see. We'll find a way. There must be a way…"

The tuft of white fur between his fingers caught her eye. He was still holding the tail of the Borometz - as though his life depended on it. Sensing the direction of her gaze, he too looked down at the little tail. With trembling hands he held out the tiny, woolly talisman to return it to Neville.

"You have been granted a rare privilege, Longbottom. Choose wisely."

Neville's hands remained deliberately folded on his lap. For the first time ever he met the Professor's eye with assurance. He had made his choice.

"You keep it, Sir. You need it now. I want you to have it. And later, maybe, you can pass it on to Harry."

Snape's throat tightened along with his grip on the tail.

Without thinking, Hermione reached out and touched Snape on the knee.

"I don't like leaving you like this, Sir. Isn't there _anything_ we can do?"

His hot hand covered hers and closed around it, drawing strength from her concern. He allowed himself that much.

"Yes - you can go home. It is dangerous for you to remain here. You've done enough for one day."

_The two of you have already done more than you will ever know… You have given me Hope._

**THE END**

**A/N: I have left it deliberately ambiguous as to how magical the Borometz really was. Where does one draw the line between magic, faith and superstition?**

1 Mungo Bonham – founded St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies in the late 1500s early 1600s.

2 Bubotoxic – harmful only to owls

3 Suturo! - It took immense self-control not to add "And keep the stitches small!" (Does an implied Rickman allusion still count? cf. RHPoT)


End file.
